


River of Lead

by Cuppa_Char



Series: Runaway [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: 3b, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dreams, Erica Reyes - Freeform, Gen, Hallucinations, Hurt Stiles, Night Terrors, Nightmares, Panic Attacks, Sick Stiles, Spark, The Darkness - Freeform, Vernon Boyd - Freeform, Waking Dreams, post 3x12 Lunar Ellipse, the nementon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-25
Updated: 2015-08-27
Packaged: 2018-01-02 16:01:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 41,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1058770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cuppa_Char/pseuds/Cuppa_Char
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s no rational order to it.</p><p>It’s like organised chaos, much like how his brain works.</p><p>It starts out as post-trauma dreams.</p><p>Then the sleep deprivation which is swiftly followed by the waking dreams-slash-hallucinations and the occasional nightmare when he’s exhausted enough to fall asleep. Only it’s at this stage that he feels the burning, sees the flames, and ends up smelling like burnt corpses.</p><p>---<br/><i>Stiles is left a disorientated, confused, shivering and wet mess.</i></p><p><i>“Hey,” Derek repeats, hooking a finger under the pale boy’s chin and forcing his gaze to lock on him. “We need to get you into some warm and dry clothes,” Derek says. Stiles blinks at him but still doesn’t respond. </i><br/> </p>
            </blockquote>





	1. sleep tight, memories

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Aaron Sprinkles 'River of Lead'.  
> My attempt at going down the 3b 'lose your mind' theme. General spoilers for 3a and 3x12 Lunar Ellipse
> 
> Stiles post-reflective-Derek leaving flashback was actually a re-edited version of a drabble I did on my tumblr (that was a response to Lissie's 'I Bet On You'.) Just tweaked slightly.
> 
> Part of the Runaway Series, this will be at least a few chapters long, and there will be a sequel.
> 
> Partly inspired by the video for Dokken's 'Dream Warrior' (Nightmare On Elm Street 3). Just picture Stiles in it instead and you'll probably get what image I'm going for.  
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtR6IrvxeFs&list=PLsES5EadSHaWYJMSCJ9fqDFDeFDyMSsec&index=1

 

_Sleep tight_

_Memories_

_We’ve all got to turn in sometimes_

_Fall back_

_Take a seat_

_‘Cause we never got past the headlines_

_And who could ever understand_

_The obligation that was forcing my hand_

_Another chance for grace to win_

_As I give in_

_Down this river of lead I roam_

_Feeling it move beneath_

_If the fire don’t kill me the water will_

_Feeling it pull me underneath_

_Lay me down to sleep_

_I pray there’s something left to keep’_

**_River of Lead extract (Aaron Sprinkle)_ **

 

* * *

 

There’s no rational order to it.

It’s like organised chaos, much like how his brain works.

It starts out as post-trauma dreams.

Then the sleep deprivation which is swiftly followed by the waking dreams-slash-hallucinations and the occasional nightmare when he’s exhausted enough to fall asleep. Only it’s at this stage that he feels the burning, sees the flames, and ends up smelling like burnt corpses.

 

* * *

 

 

After Jennifer, the root cellar, and the Nementon becoming a beacon again, Stiles dreams.

He dreams of what ifs and what could be’s.

He dreams that he’s too late getting to the others, that the dirt and soil and wood all fall around them and everyone dies. Sometimes he’s not too late, but the bat doesn’t withstand the pressure, and he ends up crushed, dying with the others, within the bone-breaking and suffocating darkness.

He dreams that he drowns in a metal bath-tub at Deaton’s clinic.

Sometimes he never gets back from the white room.

Other times he’s lost amongst the trees. Watching and re-watching the past over and over again.

They’re just dreams and he wakes up.

Until they’re not and he can’t.

Because eventually everyone will start to realise that these dreams are something more… much like Stiles himself.

 

* * *

 

 

Stiles doesn’t remember falling asleep but he finds himself waking in a room that doesn’t look familiar. A bed that’s too big. Or a body that was too small. Stiles doesn’t feel himself either way.

He rolls on to his side and sees the moon glowing brightly within the clear sky. It calms him and he sighs with it.

He hears noises from somewhere below. Unfamiliar and yet, between the ugly tones and loud banging, there’s a familiarity to it that Stiles has never known.

When he rolls back he can see the door to the room is slightly ajar, warm glowing light from the hallway leaving dancing shadows across the wall, a few dust particles fluttering in his line of vision. A loud scream followed by a chorus of snarls and a few howls.

Stiles feels the flinch within him but doesn’t so as much see it on his body.

“Dad?” a voice that’s not his own calls out quietly. It’s younger than he is. A child.

The noises instantly stop and wariness creeps up within him.

Then hushed whispers. A soft voice that sounds like it’s pleading. Begging quietly. A loud raucous laughter. Feminine but obnoxious.

He climbs out of bed and small feet carry him across a wooden floor.

He manages to slip through the open gap of the door.

There’s a name on it but it’s blurry and out of focus so he can’t make the word out.

He tries to call out again. He takes a breath but then there’s something there in his throat. Thick and clogging and he suddenly can’t breathe. The floor disappears from beneath him… or at least there’s a sense of falling, because he’s suddenly not in a hallway that he was never familiar with.

Instead there’s the abrupt arrival of fire and screams. Thick flames lick up and around, burning him, and he comes to the sudden realisation that he is about to die. It’s so fast and so left-field he doesn’t get a chance to process anything. Like regret. Like’s he’s too young to die. Like how it would affect his dad. Because he was walking across hard wooden floors and now he’s fucking burning to death.

That’s not the worst thing though.

It was the screams.

 

* * *

 

Stiles comes to suddenly, jack-knifing up abruptly, mouth parted open in a silent scream. He blinks rapidly when he realises that this time he’s brought something back with him. Thick, terrifying flames cover the walls, occasionally trying to flick out and lick at his body that was still trapped in a tangle of sheets. The sound of the fire roars loudly throughout the room, louder and wilder than any feral wolf could be.

He tries to scream again but nothing comes out and all he achieves is the feeling of thick, clogging smoke restricting his breathing and leaving him choking against it, despite the fact there’s not a trace of anything except the angry red and orange flames that dance around him.

His door suddenly opens and Stiles tears his eyes away from the flames as his dad appears and wades through the flames as though they were never there.

 _Oh_.

His dad stops just short of stepping fully out of its reach and it’s all over him now, dancing up down his body, engulfing him. Stiles watches, fear and terror keeping him rooted to the bed, as his skin blisters and peels away.

His dad’s lips move, Stiles not hearing anything except the roar and loud crackles of the flame, revealing stringy strips of muscle and exposed teeth.

Stiles screams some more, or at least he’s pretty sure he did, and then some more when hands suddenly reach for him and shake him a little. His dad’s face appears in front of him and Stiles watches it in reverse. Strips of muscle and skin fall back into place. Teeth, and jaws and bones get covered and Stiles can see the lips moving urgently within the loudness.

_Wake up. Wake up. It’s just a dream, Stiles. WAKE UP!_

“- Up. It’s okay, Stiles. You’re okay,” his dad’s voice cuts in and the roaring has gone. Somehow the sheets have gone and he’s been moved so that he’s half leaning on his dad and half over the side of the bed. There’s the distinct image of vomit – most of it splattered in a small pile on the floor but some, he realises with a grimace, had splashed across the bottom of his dad’s pant legs. “You’re awake now.”

“Sorry,” Stiles mutters shakily against him.

“It’s okay,” his dad murmurs next to him, running a cool hand against his forehead. “You’re okay, but you do feel a little warm.”

“I’m okay,” Stiles croaks, instantly hating the way his voice betrays him. “It was just a bad dream.”

“I’ve seen your bad dreams – if that’s what you’re calling them,” his dad says, frowning at him. “That was the worst I’ve seen them. It was almost like a night terror.”

“Yeah, I suppose it was a bit…” Stiles agrees with a shrug.

“Have you had it like that before?” his dad nudges him when Stiles drifts along for too long.

Stiles shakes his head, pointedly ignoring the fact that he had indeed had some weird ass waking dreams in Finstock's class and seemingly pointless images flickering between the Nementon, silent signing, doors and freaky shadowy images that leave him screaming himself silly.

“What about Scott and Allison?”

“They’ve had a few moments too.”

“Like you?”

“I guess,” Stiles gives a non-committal answer. In fact, apart from Scott’s wig-out on the Lacrosse field and Allison’s two – that she has recounted so far – both of them seemed to be fairing much better than he was. Maybe it was because Scott was now a freaking true alpha and, well to be honest, Allison had always been a little rough around the edges. She was an _Argent_ after all.

“Maybe you need to talk to someone?” his dad ventures thoughtfully.

“Seriously?” he snorts. “Like who? You got someone in mind. Maybe you have a secret supernatural unit attached to the department that I don’t know about?”

“Stiles…”

“Seriously dad,” Stiles rolls his eyes, sitting up straighter. “The last person I spoke to about how I was feeling turned out to be semi-evil, so I’ll think I just stick to my own peeps in the future. Besides, Deaton said we could talk to him if we needed to. Scott already has.”

“And what about you?” his dad asks, giving his shoulder a nudge again.

“Deaton said this would be with us for the rest of our lives,” Stiles says with a shrug. “I hoped it wouldn’t be a big part. I’ve just been trying to ignore it, I guess.”

“And how’s that been working for ya, kid?” his dad asks with a raised eyebrow.

Stiles shrugs again and offers his dad a sheepish and watery grin.

“You can always talk to me. “

“I know,” Stiles instantly says. His dad raises his eyebrow even further, expectantly. “Just… not right now? I will talk to you. It’s just I’m tired and icky and I feel and smell like vomit right now.”

“Yes and yes,” his dad agrees wrinkling his nose. “And you’ve also not been sleeping as much as you should be.”

“I think the waking up screaming part showed that I was in fact asleep,” Stiles objects with a poorly executed flail of the arm.

“Falling asleep from exhaustion is not the same thing. Sleep deprivation can cause a lot of things you know,” his dad frowns at him, planting a wide palm across the top of his head and tilting it so he could scrutinise the obvious greyness under his eyes. “When you do talk to me I want you to tell me the truth. Now that everything is out in the open there’s no excuses.” Stiles inwardly snorts when he re-edits it what he hears in his head and comes away with _‘now that the werewolf’s out of the bag’_. “But it does mean you have to start being honest with yourself.”

Stiles huffs a heavy breath out and nods, gingerly moving away from the fresh vomit.

“You should go to bed,” Stiles announces and waves down to the floor. “I’ll clear that up.”

“No,” his dad argues at him and shoves him gently upwards. “You’re going to have a shower and I’ll clean that up. Then you’re going to bed.”

Stiles tries to protest but his dad herds him out of his room with a fresh set of pj’s and the softest towel he’s ever had the grace to touch. By the time he’s back, freshly warmed, smelling the nicer side of vomit, the floor is scrubbed clean and the bed-sheets have been changed. His dad ends up tucking him into bed which is both nice and totally mortifying.

His dad insists on staying until he’s sure Stiles is asleep, so he does what he does best and feigns it until his dad yawns loudly and makes his way back to his own room.

Stiles opens his eyes and vows never to sleep again.

Instead he thinks back to the day after they’d pulled everyone out of the root cellar. When Scott had turned up after mysteriously disappearing on him and taking an even more mysterious phone call which he vehemently refused to tell him about. When he re-appeared he’d told him, head still tender and bruised, stitches pulling across his temple, that Derek and Cora had left.

It left him reeling more than any head-wound could.

 

* * *

 

_Stiles is pissed. In fact he’s more than pissed. He’s downright outraged._

_Derek’s gone. With Cora. And he’s fucking mad, okay? He’s just gone. Like none of it mattered. Not one fucking bit. And he knows it’s not Cora’s fault. She just wanted a better life. A new start. And she’s Derek’s sister. Of course he wanted those things for her as well. And him. A new start. A new beginning. But he’s still pissed at her. Because this was their hearts that they played with. His. Scott’s. Even Isaac’s. He saw how Isaac’s face had changed when he heard they had left and although Scott was denying it, he looked bummed too._

_Stiles had taken a chance with them. How many times had he saved Derek’s life? Cora’s? How many times did he have to lay his life down? He feels fucking ashamed, now, that he’d actually cried in front of Derek (he’d thought they’d been at that stage of their little fucked up lives, that tears and grief and small gestures of comfort meant something) because it was all for show._

_He can’t help but think that they’re little bitches for this. Fucking cowards. It’s not like he can just up and leave like that. He has commitments. He has family. And he’s glad for that. That his dad and Mrs McCall and Scott are alive. And Lydia - despite the google-eyes for Aidan - because whatever they’re going to become, it’s going to be something._

_He shouldn’t deny their happiness or the fact that Cora gave Derek a reason to leave. Derek’s had a lifetime of shit and he actually has something to live for. To fight for. But they shouldn’t have to do that. To fight. Cora should be able to grow up anew, get her own life, and have her own family. And Derek will get to watch and maybe get his own too. He’s still young. He’s still got a chance._

_Stiles thinks, a little meanly, that she’ll probably leave him. And because he’s still bitter about everything he thinks 'I hope she leaves you, like you did us…'_

_(he doesn’t mean it)_

 

* * *

 

 

His dad keeps him off school for a few days until he’s sure that he’s not running a fever. Although it’s pretty apparent straight away that the hot flush to his skin had been a residue of the hot flames that danced across his skin but due to the fact Stiles refused to talk about what he’d dreamed about, and his dad was none the wiser, he just went along with it.

By the third day though his dad was satisfied enough and insisted on driving him to school. Stiles jeep was still on the drive, unused and un-drivable, on the account that they were still a little short on the money to get it fixed, and Stiles wasn’t really in the mood for the bus. Or people in general.

“Call me if you don’t feel up for it,” his dad says.

Stiles nods and fishes his rucksack out of the back and swings it up over his shoulders.

“Will do, daddio…” Stiles announces with a small wave. It’s obvious that his dad’s not going to leave until Stiles makes the first move so he turns on his heel and marches determinedly towards the door until he hears the familiar rumble of the cruiser pulling away.

He feels the tension building, the itchiness that he’s grown accustomed to, and the irritability that, of late, is always there. He doesn’t feel particularly sociable today and would like nothing better than to shut the entire fucking world out. He makes do with sticking his earphones in and flipping his hood up instead, tightening both hands around the straps on his shoulders.

He makes it halfway down the hall, just a few feet away from his locker, when something big and a little heavy slams down onto his shoulder. Stiles yelps and whirls, half-expecting something big and dangerous and ready to eat his face. Instead Isaac is there, hands up and placating.

“Whoa,” Isaac says, eyes wide, mouth quirking amusedly. “You’re a little jumpy.”

Stiles can’t actually hear most of what Isaac says thanks, mostly, to the fact that he’d cranked up the volume of his IPod. He plucks a bud out of one ear.

“I’ve been calling you for ages,” Isaac says, winkling his nose. He makes no show at hiding the fact that he sniffs around Stiles for a few seconds. Stiles rolls his eyes and turns his back, heading the last few feet to his locker. “Couldn’t you hear me?”

“Earphones,” Stiles says, plucking his remaining ear-bud out.

“You look like shit.”

“Thanks,” Stiles mutters, coming up blank with a witty reply. Isaac seems to wait, expecting _something_ from him. Stiles ignores him and turns his back again, shoving books randomly in. He has no time for Isaac today… well he doesn’t at the best of times, but today – along with his building irritation and sudden, surprising head-ache, he’s about a nano-second away from yelling in the werewolf’s face. Isaac had been tolerable when Derek and the pack had been around, if not mildly annoying and obnoxious, but now Derek was gone, and Boyd and Erica were both dead, Isaac was spending more time with Scott. It was clear that there was something weird going on between Allison too but as Scott was now the only alpha he knew there was more Scott and Isaac time then there was Scott and Stiles time. Although, despite the fact he wanted to yell at him and tell the best-friend stealer to _go_ _fuck himself in mistletoe_ he was also somewhat relieved. It meant there was more time not to pretend that he was okay. He didn’t have to smile and give half-hearted thumbs up and be someone’s ‘rock’. And Lydia? Well… she was off having sexytimes with one half of the block-head twins.

“So, are you coming tonight?”

“Tonight?” Stiles asks distractedly, as he rummages further in his locker.

“The pack-meet?” Isaac says and rolls his eyes as though it was the most obvious thing. “Scott’s probably going to mention it to you in class. He said he tried to call you a few times.”

Stiles ignores him further.

“It’s just Derek wanted to make sure everyone was coming.”

“Dere- what?” Stiles asks, abandoning the contents of the locker and snapping around.

“Shit… you didn’t know?” Isaac blanches and then shakes his head in confusion. “I thought you knew.”

“When?”

“Yesterday evening,” Isaac shrugs. “He only just got back if that helps.”

It doesn’t because now he realises he’s last to know. He ends up stalking off to his next class.

 

* * *

 

“I called him.”

“Derek Hale?” Stiles hisses at Scott. “Of all the people you call, you call Derek?”

“Who else would I have called?”

“Why did you have to call anyone?”

“C’mon Stiles. Look around. We’ve opened a can of worms. I might be an alpha now but I have no clue what I’m doing.”

“You’re comparing this to a can of worms?”

“What do you want me to call it?”

Stiles shrugs and dumps his bag down at his desk.

“What about Deaton?”

“Deaton suggested I call him.”

“Why?”

“I thought I just said why.”

“That was the PG version,” Stiles huffs, sitting down and looking at Scott with questionable eyes. “I want the real reason.”

“If it happened to have escaped your notice, something weird is going on. Something that I don’t think I have any control over. Or even any idea what it is,” Scott sighs, sitting next to him. He turns worried eyes towards him. “And you’re doing weird shit, man. I’m worried about you.”

“Oh. My. God,” Stiles turns a horrified look towards his friend. “You called him because of me, didn’t you? What the hell did you tell him?” he shakes his head and hardens his eyes in accusation. “And I’m offended that you think I’m losing my mind. Thanks, man. Way to go.”

“It’s not like that…” Scott tries to plant a calming hand on his shoulder but Stiles shakes it off roughly.

“I’m not writing things backwards,” Stiles mutters.

“Yet,” Scott huffs under his breath and Stiles isn’t entirely sure if Scott is joking or not but Stiles musters enough energy to quirk his lips, only thinking a little belatedly, that they might be making light of Lydia’s previous mental state.

“Look at Lydia now. She’s a picture of health.”

“She’s a banshee.”

“Are you afraid I might be something else?” Stiles asks seriously. “Something bad? Because whatever the darkness is, it’s not going to be _nice_ is it?”

“No,” Scott says, shaking his head hard, squeezing his elbow. “I’m just worried about you. When was the last time you slept?”

Stiles doesn’t answer, knowing full-well it was nearly three nights ago, after he’d dreamt about fire.

“Your dad called my mom. He was asking about sleeping pills,” Scott continues worriedly. “They’re not for him, are they?”

“I’m okay, Scott…” Stiles says, looking away and avoiding the concerned look in his friend’s eyes. “I just need a good night’s sleep.”

Scott looks like he’s going to object to Stiles nonchalant dismissal but their teacher is coughing and eyeing Stiles coolly across the room.

Harris might be dead and gone but his dislike of Stiles still, it seems, remained strong. The new, replacement teacher, had taken an instant dislike to him. Unlike Harris, who had a somewhat rational if not unfair reason, Crabtree (or Crabby as Stiles had started calling him) had no apparent reason. Stiles wonders, a little amusedly and not beyond feasibility, if Harris had left notes on him.

Stiles ignores everyone, including Crabby, and pulls his notebook free ready to start the class.

 

* * *

 

 

They’re nearly three quarters of the way through the class when Scott notices a stutter to Stiles heartbeat.

Scott leans forward until he can see the side of Stiles face. His eyes are blinking sluggishly open and closed. Every time they open Scott catches the way they stare glassily ahead. The pen, which he’d previously been writing with, was now being squeezed tightly between clasped fingers, the creak of plastic and rustling paper loud against Scott’s ears.

Scott looks down, expecting to see the familiar words of _wake up_ across the page, but instead all that’s there is the equations and numbers and copious amount of writing that Stiles had copied down from the chalk-board. Somewhere, though, Stiles had stopped writing and the words and numbers had disappeared into a wonky line as Stiles dragged the pen across the paper. And he didn’t stop, tight trembling hand dragging it right and then left until the rest of the paper was nothing but a mixture of diagonal lines.

“Stiles?” Scott asks quietly.

Stiles doesn’t respond, hand drifting across the paper. Another stutter to his heart-beat. A small hitch to his breath.

“Stiles?” Scott whispers again, slowly planting his hand hesitantly over Stiles and the pen.

As soon as Scott makes contact with him Stiles body becomes fluid and he slides heavily off the stool until he’s a heap on the floor.

“Stiles!” Scott yells in alarm, dropping to his knees beside him, trying to reach for him, only for Stiles to writhe on the floor and letting out a scream that’s too loud and alarming. Scott has to bite down on his lip and bring his alpha into play to stop from wolfing out.

Lydia appears, shoving gawkers and uncomfortable gigglers out of her way, Aidan, Ethan and Danny quickly following.

“What happened?” she gasps.

“I don’t know… I don’t…” Scott shakes his head, unsure how he can explain what has been happening to the three of them, especially Stiles, but he knows his touch is not calming him.

Lydia doesn’t hesitate and plants her small perfectly manicured hand across Stiles forehead. “It’s okay, Stiles. You’re okay.”

The effect is immediate. Stiles eyes fly open and he jumps, trying to fight his way free from where Lydia is trying to push him back down. Scott instantly tastes smokiness against his lips, the distinctive smell of charcoal and burnt skin in the air.

“I’m awake,” Stiles chants quietly on the floor, heaving heavy breaths out between the words.

“And that is what you get for falling asleep,” Crabtree sneers at them. “Stilinski get off the floor before I feel inclined to give you a detention. And I do _not_ want to have a reason to see your face any more than I need to.”

“He wasn’t asleep,” Scott snaps at him, although in hindsight it was probably not the best thing to say considering he was making it obvious that Stiles was now freaking out in the middle of the day while he was fully awake.

“I’m sick?” Stiles offers weakly, allowing Danny and Lydia to assist him to his feet.

“He _is_ burning up,” Lydia says. And Scott can see from where he’s stooped that there’s a slight sheen of perspiration across his forehead.

“Go to the nurse’s office…” Crabtree dismisses him and waves at the door.

Scott tries to follow but Crabtree side-eyes him and shakes his head.

“It’s fine,” Stiles tells him. “I’ll see you later.”

“Answer your phone,” Scott growls at him knowing full well he won’t. He also, most probably, won’t go the nurse’s office either.

 

* * *

 

 

Stiles doesn’t go the nurse’s office. In fact he skips the remainder of school altogether.

He ends up walking aimlessly and although he’s sure he doesn’t have another waking dream or lose any time, before he knows it it’s mid-afternoon and he has no idea how time moved on.

His phone vibrates in his pocket, rousing him from his musings, and he digs it out noticing that not only is there an un-read text from Scott but that his dad is calling.

“Hey,” he greets his dad.

“Hey, you…” his dad greets back. Stiles instantly can hear the worried tones despite the casual words. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“The school called when they realised you left. They told me what happened earlier.”

“I should have called you. Sorry.”

“Where’ve you been? That was hours ago, kid.”

“Just walking. Clearing my head.”

“You want me to come and get you?”

“No. It’s fine dad.”

“Are you sure?” his dad asks, sounding determined and worried. “We can go to Deaton’s.”

“I don’t need to do that,” Stiles sighs and then takes a breath. “Derek’s back. I’m supposed to go there after school. Everyone’s going.”

“He’s back? Since when?”

“Yesterday? Don’t be mad. I was the last to find out, apparently, if that makes you feel better.”

“It doesn’t,” his dad grouses. “You need a ride there?”

“No,” Stiles rolls his eyes. “Do I need to revoke the dad-cab ride privileges?”

“I’m just worried about you.”

“Well don’t be… look I’m going to go and buy some snacks and then head over there. By that time the others should be getting there.”

“If this is official pack-meeting stuff then I should be there,” his dad objects.

“I don’t even know what _it_ is,” Stiles reminds him, although from what Scott had said earlier, he was pretty sure that _he_ was on the list of topics. “For all I know it could just be a little reunion. Having the Sheriff there kind of ruins the party mood.”

“Hmm,” his dad muses over the phone. “If it is anything werewolf-related you’ll let me know. No more bullshitting me.”

“Language father,” Stiles laughs and then finds himself nodding. “And yes daddy dearest, I’ll let you know.”

They say their goodbyes and Stiles disconnects only to slide Scott’s message back on screen.

_Derek’s. Be there._

 

* * *

 

 

“We didn’t have to come back.”

“I know.”

“I’m serious.”

“I know.”

“So why did we?”

“Don’t you mean why did you come back?”

“Derek!”

“Cora!”

“God, you’re so annoying,” Cora says, slurping noisily at a slushie. “It’s like having Stilinski in the car with us.”

“I think you missed him.”

“What? No way,” Cora says, turning a disgusted look towards him. “He’s got this face that I just want to…. punch, I guess.”

Derek snorts and helps himself to the fries between them.

They’re in the Camaro, eating a late lunch, before they head back to the loft for the meeting that Scott instructed they must have. He wasn’t really that bothered, but Scott insisted on it, and Derek thought it would probably be a good way of getting Stiles there, considering he’d heard multiple accounts from various people over the last twenty-four hours on how Stiles had been avoiding the others.

He’d been surprised by Scott’s call and even more surprised by the panic in the new alpha’s voice.

_“Something’s coming, Derek. It could even be here right now. I don’t know what it is. And Stiles… he’s a fucking mess. There’s something wrong with him._

He’d called Deaton later, who confirmed Scott’s concern, but couldn’t enlighten him any further.

_“Scott’s right. There is something.”_

_“The darkness?”_

_“You know about this?”_

_“My mother spoke about it.”_

_“Stiles refuses to come and see me despite there being an open invitation to him. From what I hear he’s not doing as well as the others. I’m afraid of what the consequences might be.”_

Cora snatches the fries out of his grasp.

“I heard you on the phone. Are you worried about Stiles?”

Derek shrugs and plucks another fry away.

“Should we?” Cora asks again.

“We?”

“I came back didn’t I?”

“You’re worried,” Derek deflects, allowing Cora to pull the remainder of the fries completely out of his reach, suddenly spotting a familiar figure in the distance

“Am not.”

“Are too.”

“Am…” Cora starts and then rolls to a stop when she too spots the figure as it changes direction and heads across the parking lot towards the store they’re parked in front of. “Is that Stiles?”

It is Stiles, only his face looks gaunter and his skin paler than when he’d last seen him, but there was a distinctive thump of a heart-beat, one that he was familiar with. His scent followed a few seconds later, slightly overpowered by the smell of burnt charcoal and smokiness. The added scent is more than a little overwhelming and leaves him frowning in confusion.

By the look on Cora’s face she’d also picked up on it.

There’s a sudden change in Stiles heart-beat. A stutter and a hitch. And then Stiles is lurching away, hands shooting out blindly until he braces himself against the side of the store and slides ungracefully to the dirty floor beneath him.

“Stiles!” Derek yells, flinging the Camaro door open and sprinting over to the younger boy, Cora hot on his heels.

By now Stiles is rocking on the floor and clutching his head.

“Stiles?” Cora asks, reaching Stiles seconds after Derek does. She tries to grab at his arm but Stiles actually shrieks at the touch and wrenches his entire body away.

“Don’t,” Stiles pants, eyes closed, head still in his hands. “It’s okay, Stiles. You’re awake.”

Derek and Cora exchange worried glances.

He waves Cora off when she tries to touch him. The smell of burnt skin wafting over them every now and then.

“Stiles?” Derek asks instead.

“Derek?” Stiles says a little breathlessly. The rocking stops. The hands move away from his head.

Derek ventures a hand of his own to Stiles shoulder, expecting a violent reaction again but instead of flinching away, Stiles vomits all over the gum-covered floor.

“Whoa,” Derek says, catching Stiles as he starts to pitch forward. “Okay.”

Stiles vomits, violently, a further three times until it finally stops and there’s few disgruntled noises from passers-by. Stiles seemingly doesn’t care or he’s completely oblivious and Cora ends up standing over them glaring at anyone who dares even to glance in their direction.

“I think we should get you to the hospital,” Derek says when he’s positive there’s nothing left to come out.

“No,” Stiles grunts at him, unabashedly leaning into Derek’s side. “Just a migraine.”

“That was _not_ a migraine.”

“Trust me,” Stiles mutters tiredly into his side. “It could have been much worse.”

By his tone and the lingering strange smell over their clothes Derek has to reluctantly agree.

“Don’t stare,” Stiles mutters up at Cora. “It’s rude. Help me up and give me a ride to yours.”

“Who died and made you queen?” Cora mutters at him, folding her arms across her chest.

“Me?” Stiles asks with a lopsided grin.

“Not funny, Stiles…” Cora frowns, kicking his foot gently.

“Haven’t you heard about not kicking a man when he’s down?” he asks as Derek easily tugs him to his feet. Stiles sways with it but allows Derek to drag him, by the hoodie no less, towards the car.  There’s only so much gentle tactile-ness he can handle before he has to give an equal ratio of roughness.

Despite the frown still firmly on Cora’s face she manages a quirk to her lips.

“No.”

“Was that a smile?” Stiles asks, even as Derek is shoving him into the cramped back-seat. He sticks his head back out of the door, preventing Derek from snapping the seat back into place, and Derek can see the mask fall into place. A curtain that wasn’t there before. “Shit on a stick! Did Cora fucking Hale just smile?”

“Shut up, Stiles…” Cora groans at him, pushing him a little less roughly back into the seat and slamming the door in his face.

“See Derek…” Stiles huffs, voice muffled but still clearly heard from behind the closed door. “That’s how you do it.”

Cora catches his eyes before he has a chance to move around to the driver’s side.

“What the hell was that?” she asks quietly, worrying her lips.

Derek shakes his head because he hasn’t a clue.

Not one single idea and it freaks him out. Because Stiles? Stiles looks like death. And he smells so much worse.

 

* * *

 

_tbc_


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay, so I have a big apology to make. I really did intend to update this more frequently, but due to multiple ficcy things, work and tumblr (seriously takes so much of my time :D). Anyway, I give you another offering, it's a little shorter, but if I had done more, as I had planned, you'd have had to wait much longer, and I don't think I would habe been completely satisfied with the ending of that chapter. As such, I hope what I have done doesn't completely suck, but I'll let you guys have the say in that.
> 
> Go read and comment if you want (comments are not necessary tho)...
> 
> Spoilers for S2x12 (mentioned)

_River of Lead_

 

_Chapter 2_

 

Stiles is quiet.

_Too quiet._

Derek watches him, every now and then, in the rear view mirror. Stiles rests his head against the window of the Camaro seemingly ignoring the two occupants in the front. It’s disconcerting because Stiles is _too_ still. For as long as Derek has known him Stiles had always been an excitable bundle of energy, even in his distress. Flailing limbs and spastic movements.

“What, Sourwolf?” Stiles asks when their eyes catch in the mirror.

Derek averts his eyes instead of answering.

They’re nearly halfway back to the loft when they realise they hadn’t actually got any supplies to take back with them so they end up stopping at a small convenience store. He leaves Stiles and Cora in the car, hearing Stiles shout ‘chips and dips…’ after him.

When he returns he finds them bickering quietly, Stiles appearing disinterested, and brightening in relief when he opens the driver’s side door. He dumps the few paper bags he has in Cora’s lap and flings a small orange pack into the back.

“What’s that for?” Stiles asks, picking the pack of Reece’s up suspiciously.

“I thought you could do with them,” Derek tells him flatly.

“Oh… that’s… nice of you?” Stiles says, clearly confused and even more suspicious.

Cora’s looking at him with a frown.

“You get Stilinski chocolate? What about me?”

“You don’t look like you’re about to pass out from low blood sugar,” he tells her with a shrug.

“Isn’t chocolate poisonous to…?” he hears Stiles muster up some of his usual obnoxious tone.

“If you’re about to refer to me as a dog…” Cora warns him, glaring over her shoulder. “Are you fond of your face?”

“More attached?” Stiles says back. Derek tries to hide the smirk as he watches Stiles physically withdraw back into his seat. “Like physically attached. I’d like to keep it that way.”

“Then keep your cake-hole shut,” Cora smiles sweetly at him.

Stiles offers her a weak thumbs up and Derek doesn’t miss the fact that Stiles pushes the pack of Reece’s into his pocket instead of ripping it open.

By the time they get back to the loft there’s already a car and a bike outside the building indicating that the others had already arrived.

Derek actually feels a little nervous. He might have been an alpha and had betas but this is the first ‘pack’ meeting they’ve actually had. And it took Scott McCall to initiate it. Scott, who’s only been an alpha for a few months, who’s already doing a better job at leading a pack then he ever did.

Stiles scrambles out as soon as Derek slides out and disappears through the door without a glance back.

“Get the bags,” Derek calls to Cora over his shoulder, following Stiles in.

“What am I? Your personal slave?” he hears Cora complain loudly.

When he gets to his floor he realises the door is open and he wonders which one of the little shits has a key to the loft.

The rooms occupants all stop their chatter when Derek slides in after Stiles, Scott’s eyes widening when he realises they have arrived together, although Stiles appears completely oblivious and proceeds to make a beeline to the couch, staring at it greedily as though he could will Isaac’s prone form off it from where he’s lying.

Isaac cocks an eyebrow up at Stiles, smirking. “Not a chance.”

“Isaac,” Derek says firmly and even though he might not be an alpha anymore Isaac still tenses. “Go help Cora bring in the groceries.”

“She’s a werewolf,” Isaac says, disgruntled. “I think she can manage.”

“Go help her,” Scott repeats and Isaac scowls before heaving himself off the couch.

Stiles immediately sinks into the heavy folds of the furniture as soon as it’s vacated, completely unaware of the shooting gesture Scott’s head is making towards the kitchen.

“Let’s go help them,” Allison says to Lydia, stilling her from filing her nail down the bone.

“What? Why?” Lydia says affronted, pulled out of her reverie, but then catches the non-verbal communication going on between the new and old alpha. “Oh, yeah, sure…”

As soon as the room is cleared Derek follows Scott to the kitchen in the far corner.

“What happened?” Scott asks worriedly as soon as they’re out of ear-shot. “Why is he with you guys? He was supposed to go the nurse’s office at school but he ended up skipping the rest of the day. Why the hell didn’t you call?”

“Whoa,” Derek instantly says, eyebrows rising. “Calm down. We found him outside the store we were at. He was having some weird kind of panic attack. I don’t know what’s wrong but he ended up vomiting and he smells strange, like…”

“Burnt corpses?” Scott answers instead.

Derek nods quietly.

“What happened at school?” he asks.

“He just completely zoned out,” Scott says, shrugging. “One minute he was writing equations out, the next he was drawling line after line across the page until I touched him and then he started freaking out, screaming and smelling like that,” Scott continues with a wave of the hand.

They’re interrupted by Cora banging the door loudly and shouting “We’re coming in.” She strides in with the only two bags they had, the other three sheepishly trailing in after her, and dumps them into his arms, “I did the hauling, you can do the unpacking.”

She doesn’t wait for a response and heads over the couch where Stiles has managed to take up most of the space with his long frame.

“Move it Stilinski,” she mutters without bite. “My couch, my rules.”

“Actually, it’s your brothers,” Stiles reminds her tiredly, squinting. He shuffles over all the same until he’s sat at the opposite end, legs outstretched in front of him. In comparison, Cora snakes her body in, tucking her knees under her.

Derek watches Stiles, as Scott helps to put the few items of shopping away, legs outstretched in front of him, and despite the implication of his body being lax, he can tell it’s actually the opposite.

He remains too still. His fingers too tense. His face twitches occasionally. And then there was the way his heart beat would catch and stutter.

It’s obvious that there’s something wrong, even if his smell wasn’t, and that could be put, typically, down to PTSD.

He felt bad for the kid, not just for what he’s been through, but the fact that that they were ambushing him. Derek wasn’t entirely sure if this was the best way to approach the situation – if he had his way he’d probably take Stiles aside, away from all distractions, get him to focus on the him and now, and with perseverance he would hope Stiles would listen and maybe even talk. According to Scott though, a much needed _‘direct intervention’_ was needed and he was _‘just short of hitting him around the head with the hard facts’_. So that was that.

Derek noisily dumps two bowls of Doritos and dip in front of him.

Stiles cracks his eyes open and grins lazily.

“Good boy,” he cracks, although makes no effort to take any.

“Shall we get this started?” Derek asks Scott, feeling his patience thin.

“Thank god,” Stiles mutters, forcing himself to sit upright. He slaps his face and opens his mouth wide open a few times as though trying to shake himself awake. “Some of us have lives to get on with.”

There’s a murmur of agreement. Lydia perches herself on the end of the couch, while Isaac and Allison take the floor. Derek grabs a chair for himself and offers one to Scott. Scott shakes his head and leans against the wall, as though unsure of himself.

 _Nerves_. It was his first pack meeting, after all.

Derek lets Scott take the lead. He might be a little weirded out by it. Scott, who for all purposes, is still only a child himself. But there’s still a hierarchy to respect and when it comes down to it, Derek isn’t an alpha anymore.

Scott starts off with the basics, seemingly aware that Stiles would probably bolt if he realises this was all about him,  like what do with the twins who were still hanging around like a pair of lost puppets, the fact that Deucalion was still out there, and Jennifer’s body was still missing.

They were still throwing ideas back and forth (Stiles and Isaac bickering before Stiles had un-characteristically muttered _‘you still milking that?’_ when Isaac reminded him he’d been locked in a freezer for a big chunk of his child-hood as a response to be being accused of not being helpful) and no sign of getting any nearer to discussing Stiles when Derek realises how tired the younger boy was. He’s exhausted and obviously losing out to sleep.

After a few false starts and eye flickering Stiles truly sacks out, body going limp, fingers unwinding from their endless fidgeting, cuffs frayed from where he’d been playing with several loose threads.

Scott eventually calls time on their previous discussion when he realises most of the group are bickering quietly between themselves.

“Okay, how about a change of topic?”

“Not now,” Derek says nodding to towards Stiles.

“Oh,” Scott says disappointed and shakes his head. “I don’t want to wake him. He’s not been sleeping.”

Stiles seems completely unaware of the scrutiny and sinks further into the couch, head listing sideways, until he completely crumples into Cora’s side.

“Oh, okay…” Cora mutters. “This is completely invading my personal space, Stilinski.”

She tries to gently touch his arm but he flinches violently as soon as she makes contact.

“No, no…”

“Stiles?” Scott starts worriedly, already moving away from the wall.

“Wait…” Derek snaps, catching Scott’s arm. “Look.”

They do. It kind of freezes everyone to the spot. There’s the tell-tale signs of smoke drifting from the folds of his navy blue plaid shirt.

 

 

* * *

 

 

_He’s not a little boy now, but he still walks across the floor bare-footed._

_Outside the room the name on the door is no longer out of focus but the letters are jumbled and he can’t figure it out._

_Cojab_

_There is smoke billowing up the stairs and he stumbles down them. He recognises the place but he’s never been there before. There’s a few trinkets on the way. Scattered framed photos, glass broken, that he vaguely recognises too._

_By the time he’s down at the basement there’s loud crying. Begging. Someone is pleading._

_A heavy hand settles across the back of his shoulders. Bigger than it should feel._

_When he turns there’s no one there except a small boy, crying, asking for his mother. Behind him there’s a woman. Blonde hair. Bilious laugh. Stiles recognises her too._

_“What do we have here?” she asks in a soft voice. She strokes the boy’s face. “You look like your brother.”_

_The boy looks confused, tilts his head and stares at her lips._

_“Put him in with the others,” she finally says, shoving him forward. Stiles automatically takes a step back as a man steps in front of him, catching the stumbling boy. Stiles glances behind him, sees the now open basement door and the struggling bodies. His eyes slowly lower to the floor. Mountain ash. His eyes catch hold of an older woman, brunette, staring at him. The stare follows him as he drops to his knees and tries to break the seal, but no matter how many times he tries, it just re-seals itself. He turns to look at her, shaking his head vigorously as frustrated tears prevail._

_Her expression doesn’t change at all._

_It’s only now that he realises she’s silently signing the same gestures as what he’d seen Finstock and the rest of the class doing weeks earlier_

_He stands abruptly, turning, to find the other, blonde, woman standing right behind him. She’s so close that he can see into the deep lacerations on her neck, ones that hadn’t been there before, and despite the need to gag, he has an overwhelming urge to reach into her throat and squeeze with all his might._

_Kate. Kate Argent._

_He’d never seen her after Peter had ripped her throat out. Scott hadn’t let him. And then his dad had made sure as hell he hadn’t._

_Instead he takes a staggering step backwards as she lurches forward and then he’s inside the basement, surrounded by a deep veil of despair, and he forces his voice out. His own against the torrent of the room._

_“No, don’t, please…” and soon his voice is joined by others, synchronising, until it’s a loud echo reverberating against his ear drums._

_There’s more gasoline._

_A flick of a lighter_

_and-_

 

 

* * *

 

“Oh my god,” Cora exclaims loudly, panic settling into her voice. She reaches out to touch him again. “Wake up, Stiles…”

Stiles flinches away violently from her touch on his arm, flinging himself back towards the other end of the couch with a shriek, shoulder hitting the arm rest painfully.

Lydia yelps in surprise and jumps away from the sofa quickly. Her entire body is tense and her eyes wild.

“What’s going on?” she demands, breathing heavily.

“Lydia?” Scott asks uncertainly, coming to a standstill beside the coffee table and hesitating between Stiles and the red-head. “What wrong? What do you feel?”

“I don’t know. Something,” she admits, shaking her head. “Something doesn’t feel right.”

“Like what?”

“I _don’t_ know,” she insists and scrunches her face up tight, eyes squeezing shut. “I think I can hear voices. There’s too many of them… I don’t know what’s being said,” she opens her eyes, damp, but not crying. “Fear. I feel fear. Lots of it.”

Stiles moans from where he’s folded into himself, gasping into a choked sob and muttering “No, don’t, please…” A single tear slides down the side of his face from his closed eyes.

“Great,” Cora mutters angrily, “While you figure that out I’m going to wake him up. Stiles?” She asks in hesitation.

“No, Cora, wait…” Derek says, realising that every touch Cora has made since Stiles fell asleep has resulted in a more violent reaction than before, but it’s too late. Her hand is already on his knee, gently shaking him.

The result is almost instantaneous. Stiles eyes snap open and he screams, louder than Derek has ever heard him scream before, jack-knifing off the couch.

 

 

* * *

 

 

_He’s no longer in the basement._

_But there’s still screaming and crying._

_Someone’s banging on the door, tearing skin, breaking nails… no, claws, screaming and sobbing hysterically._

_Through the screaming there’s a voice._

_“Run, baby. Run and don’t look back. Never look back.”_

_The message isn’t for him, but the signing that she’s doing is._

 

 

* * *

 

 

Stiles blindly hits the table, sending the two bowls careening to the floor, shattering on impact. Stiles follows it, flying over it as knees strike it painfully and he crumples over. The momentum leaves him landing on the broken shards but the shock of it doesn’t help shake him out of whatever he’s seeing. He continues to scream, dragging himself further across the sharp fragments, until Derek shakes himself into action.

“Whoa, hey…” he grunts as he grabs hold of Stiles with both arms. “Stop.”

Stiles screams further, wails deep, as he tries to fling himself away again.

“Stiles!” Derek barks, grunts again as he finds an elbow firmly in his sternum. He has to wrap both arms, followed by his legs, to prevent Stiles from hurting himself further, rolling their bodies away from the chip and dip massacre. “You’re awake, you’re okay. You’re awake and you’re at my loft.”

There’s sweat pouring off him, but his face is an alabaster white, and his clammy to touch. Stiles digs his hands into Derek’s exposed arms, scratching his short nails against his skin, and chokes on more sobs, gasping for breath. “Don’t let them in, don’t let them in, don’t let them…”

“Stiles?” Scott asks timidly. It should be laughable really, that a true alpha could sound so scared, but it’s not. Derek glances at the occupants of the room and sees the same look on all of their faces, even Cora’s. The look of the pure horror. By the way the three other werewolves were all heavily breathing, they too could smell the strong odorous fear and despair rolling off Stiles shaking frame.

Stiles resistance is subsiding, the dragging of nails down his skin has stopped, and he now has one hand wound around Derek’s arm, the other has found its way to his shirt, clasping and twisting the material tightly. He’s still gasping for breath, body shuddering. Derek can smell the salty tears on him.

“It’s okay,” Derek reassures him. “You’re here. You’re safe.”

“Am I?” Stiles asks. Just the effort of the words leaves him spluttering and he tries to heave in a deep breath.

“Take it easy,” Derek informs him quietly, releasing an arm so he can touch his back slightly. Stiles sags but doesn’t fall any further, grabbing hold of Derek to balance him further. It should be weird and uncomfortable, being so close and tactile, but strangely it’s not. He rubs Stiles back between his shoulder blades reassuringly. “Nice slow breaths, Stiles…” he encourages him.

He hears the hiss of a breath as it’s sucked in and feels the vibrations as he slowly forces them out. It’s an effort for him, Derek can tell, but at least he’s trying.

Despite the calming of his breathing there’s still an occasional stutter and shudder and he feels Stiles release his earlier hold to reach up and wipe his eyes as a fresh wave of tears make their escape.

“Can you guys give me a moment?” Stiles voice cracks loudly in the otherwise quiet room, despite hardly having much of a voice left.

Allison nods straight away and drags a protesting Lydia with her. Isaac wastes no time in bolting and Cora reluctantly follows, throwing a worried glance back at the shaking form huddled on the floor.

Derek doesn’t move from where he’s still sat and Stiles doesn’t object so he takes it as invite to stay. As soon as the room empties, apart from Scott who insists on staying, Stiles curls away from Derek and folds into a foetal position.

Scott craws forward on his knees, not saying anything, and plants his hand over Stiles knee.

Stiles doesn’t complain but he does start openly crying and covers his face, shielding it from them, and Derek doesn’t know how to help any further except to offer a warm hand again, settling it firmly against his back and hoping it offered what little comfort he could give.

 

* * *

 

_tbc_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am going to be incorporating elements of 3b into this so it's going be canon-divergent, but not completely.
> 
>  
> 
> If you want to discuss the fic/or TW in general you can find me over at cuppachar.tumblr.com


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the delay. RL caught up with me, plus I have many writing objects going on right now
> 
> Warning: Some triggery things ahead, such as a child-abuse flashback, kind of.

 

* * *

 

 

He’s sat on a cold metal examination table in Deaton’s clinic, long legs hanging off the table, and a blanket wrapped around his still trembling body. Scott’s sat next to him silently, quietly offering his presence with his arm pressed against his side.

He’s still got an audience – Derek is facing him, leant against the counter at his back, arms crossed against his chest, eyes a confusing mixture of intense scrutiny and… something else, that Stiles can’t quite decipher. Allison and Isaac are stood close, near the door to the waiting room and Stiles has only just now realised how close they’re standing and wow, that’s new. By their stance he figures that they both want to leave but something keeps them there.

He’d prefer that they had left.

Lydia, though, is stood between them and Derek. She looks like she has purpose, although her eyes are full of doubt, and they’re being directed at him, concern and worry across her features. He licks his lip nervously and glances away, eyes falling on Cora who’s completely on the other side of the room, as far away as possible, eyes wide. She looks terrified. Or fuming. Stiles can’t quite figure it out.

“I don’t get it,” he says, averting his eyes into his lap and tugging the blanket closer. “Why me? I’m nothing special. Why not Lydia? She’s a death omen. A banshee. A wailing woman. The dead literally talk to her all the time…” he rolls to a stop when he glances up and sees her hardening her eyes. “No offence Lyds…”

She shrugs after a few seconds and offers a wry smile.

“He’s right,” she directs at Deaton. “Why him?”

“You performed a ritualistic sacrifice on yourself,” Isaac offers dryly. “How about that?”

“Can you be any less helpful?” Stiles snaps at him, tensing further, anger winding through his frame.

“Hey,” Scott murmurs next to him, winding his hand around his wrist. “It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not…” Stiles huffs out, feeling his eyes sting frustratingly. “I’m losing my shit here and Isaac thinks it’s something to joke about?”

“No,” Isaac immediately shakes his head. “That’s not what I meant. I was just trying to…”

“Well don’t,” he snaps at him. He wipes at the increasing wetness building in his eyes. “It’s stupid. You’re fucking stupid…” he doesn’t know why he’s being so mean and crude to him, all he knows is, over the past few weeks that’s all Stiles wants to do. It’s that or beat the crap out of him, and Stiles knows that’s not even an option.

“Isaac is right actually,” Deaton tells him, cutting him off in his tirade. “You sacrificed yourself and were technically dead. You went to a place you shouldn’t have gone and then you came back.”

“So he brought something back with him?” Scott asks his boss from his side.

“It’s more like the nemeton senses what you’ve done,” Deaton explains. “It’s connected to all three of you, but it’s drawing something specifically out of Stiles, much like how the supernatural will be drawn to it, like a Beacon.”

“I’m not supernatural,” Stiles says, voice hardening. He draws back further on the table, pulling the blanket with him, knowing how timid it looks. “I’m nothing. Just human. All human.”

“Yes you are,” Deaton agrees but it does nothing to reassure him. “But the nemeton ignited something…”

“Ignited?” Stiles asks slowly. He thinks about the word, of the meaning, and remembers a time when Deaton had used something similar. “Like a spark?”

Deaton nods at him.

“You dick!” Stiles explodes. He’s sure he would have launched himself off the table if Scott hadn’t thrown a heavy arm across his shoulders, pushing him further against the unyielding and hard table. “You told me it was a metaphor. That it meant nothing.”

“It was,” Deaton says sincerely, not flinching at the sudden murderous glare. “At the time it was. But the words were intentional, Stiles. I had my suspicions but it wasn’t until after that I realised how much potential you had.”

“What’s he talking about?” Derek asks. He sounds wound and tight.

“Mountain ash. The night of the rave,” Scott offers and then squeezes Stiles shoulder. “Right?”

Stiles nods tiredly. He already felt wiped after coming to on loft floor but now he feels like he could just drift backwards and hope for a soft landing.

“I didn’t have enough,” Stiles reminds Deaton with an accusatory tone.

“I know.”

“Wait? You knew Stiles didn’t have enough,” Derek’s angered tone, gruff and tense hits him like a sucker punch to the chest because he doesn’t know how to react to Derek Hale being angered on behalf of him.

“Only after,” Deaton shakes his head. “After Stiles told me what had happened.”

“You didn’t think it was important to tell me?”

“You weren’t ready,” Deaton tells him. His voice is smooth, calm and controlled. And so fucking annoying.

“And I am now?” Stiles asks, his voice breaking on the absurdity of it.

“No,” Deaton continues, shaking his head. “But circumstances have forced my hand.”

“Imagination is greater than knowledge,” Stiles mumbles to himself, burying his face into his hands and tucking his knee’s up against his chest.

He feels a warmth spread though him, tingling down his shoulder and expanding, the pressure on his chest easing. He knows it’s Scott’s doing and he shivers against the cold from the metal seeping through his pant legs. He sags against Scott’s side, seeking the warmth being emitted there and sighs tiredly against it.

“Stiles? I want you tell me about the dreams,” Deaton tells him.

Stiles lifts his head from his knees and sees that Deaton has grabbed a chair and is now sitting in front of the table looking up at him expectantly

“I can’t,” Stiles shakes his head warily, eyes drifting around the room, hesitating on Derek until they finally fall on Cora. “Not with…”

“Do you mind?” Deaton calls over his shoulder.

Derek nods at Isaac, Lydia and Allison and again they all leave, just like before.

“Go wait outside,” Derek tells his sister.

“No!” Cora stands defiantly, rooted to the spot. “I get to hear this.”

“Outside. Now,” Derek growls at her and Stiles is a little bit surprised to see how she immediately concedes, glaring at Derek before stomping through the room and slamming the door shut. “Go on,” Derek tells them.

“I’ve had two that I can remember,” Stiles starts. He runs his tongue nervously over his lips. “The third one, the one before I went to Derek’s, not so much. That’s pretty cloudy…”

“Okay, start with the two that you remember.”

Stiles nods and tells them about the first dream. How he had been a small boy, how it had been over quickly, one minute being in the hall and then being in the fire and waking up to find it covering his walls, burning his father.

“And the second time? Was it the same?”

“No,” Stiles shakes his head and glances at Derek who’s standing pale faced and unreadable. Stiles sucks down his own fear and trepidation because if Derek can wade through this shit Stiles can at least hold his own together. “This time my clothes were smoking. And I wasn’t a boy this time. I was me. It was slower too. It progressed, like there was no jumping. There were letters too… on the door. I think it was a name but it didn’t make sense.”

“What was it?” Derek asked.

“C. O. J. A. B.”

“Jacob,” Derek answers, mouth tightening in a grimace. Stiles hears it hissed between his teeth. It’s almost painful to hear. “My youngest brother.”

Oh. Stiles should have figured those letters out. It wasn’t too difficult. (Cojab) Jacob (Cojab) Jacob (Cojab) Jacob, Jacob, Jacob…

“Stiles?”

“I walked down the stairs. There were pictures everywhere,” Stiles finds himself continuing. He feels distant. Lost. His voice sounds strange. Detached and flat. “There were noises. Laughing. Screaming. Crying. More laughter.”

He feels Scott’s arm tighten.

“Does he have to do this now?” Scott asks in concern. “He doesn’t look good.”

“Yes,” both Deaton and Derek answer, although Derek sounds reluctant, as though if Stiles just decided to cut and run, he wouldn’t stop him.

“The boy – Jacob, I guess – was there and was asking for his mom – your mom,” he quickly corrects. “Kate Argent was there too…” he pauses when Derek flinches, unsure if he should carry on.

“Go on,” Derek prompts.

“She was there… but it was like her then and later. Her throat was cut and she told some guy, another hunter, to put him with the others but I didn’t see where… I saw your mom…” his voice pitches high as he directs the word to Derek, who’s not moving, frozen and staring back. “The door was open and she was looking at me and I couldn’t figure out why she just didn’t leave and then I saw the mountain ash and I tried Derek… I swear to god I tried, but I couldn’t break it,” his voice rises, becoming more desperate, gulping. He feels his eyes spill over with tears.

Derek doesn’t respond and simply takes a step back further. Stiles is sure the shelf digging into his back must start to hurt.

“Hey,” Scott whispers into his ear, arm tightening around his increasingly trembling body. “It was just a dream. You have no control over what happened in the past.”

“Everything got choppy after that,” Stiles manages to get out between heaving breaths. He’s panicking now, because he wants Derek to know that he tried. That he didn’t just stand there and watch his family burn. His head hurts from the pressure of it, replacing the bone wary exhaustion, and builds up behind his eyes. “One minute I’m outside the basement and then I’m in it and I watched them throw the lighter and everything went up so quickly,” he watches Derek through watery eyes. How he clenches his hands into fists, how rigid his body has become, chest rising more sharply than before, eyes a shiny blue. “And then someone was outside trying to get in and they were screaming and crying and your mom was telling them to run and she…”

The door suddenly bangs open and Cora’s suddenly in the room, her own eyes shining brightly, snarling. Stiles jumps at the ferociousness of it.

“No,” she growls suddenly in his face. She grabs at his shirt through the blanket and shakes him, lifting him off the table. “My mother would not show you that. She wouldn’t.”

“Stop!” Scott bellows loudly near his ear. It’s loud and deafening and one that he recognises as his alpha voice. “Cora!”

“Don’t…” Stiles pleads quietly, voice giving out on him. He’s not entirely sure who he’s asking, but by the sound of Scott’s distorted voice, the growls, and the extended claws reaching out to Cora, he knows it’s not going to be pretty. He really doesn’t want to be responsible for Derek’s sister to end up bleeding out on the clinic floor.

Cora ignores both the order and his own plea and shakes him further and Stiles lets her, body listlessly being jerked about.

“Cora!” Derek barks at her and it must do something because she abruptly drops him like a ton of bricks and he stumbles before Scott helps steady him against the side of the table.

Derek has her wrist firmly in his hand and it’s only now that he realises she was going to strike his unsuspecting face. Wow, he thinks, bitch slapped by a werewolf.

“Cool off,” Derek barks at her, yanking her back.

“No!” she yells, trying to break free. She whirls on him but faces Deaton instead. “I don’t know what you’re trying to imply here, but my mother wouldn’t drag Stiles into this. She wouldn’t make a sixteen year old boy see that, she wouldn’t…”

“It was you?” Stiles asks quietly, once he’s righted himself up again. “Outside the door?” she doesn’t answer straight away and heaves an audible and heavy breath out between the occupants of the room. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want your fucking sympathy, Stilinski,” she snarls at him. “I want to know what she said.”

“Don’t talk to him like that,” Scott snaps at her, his hand is wound around his arm now and Stiles realises that since he’d crawled over to him at the loft he’s never once broken physical contact with him. “He hasn’t done anything wrong.”

“Please…” Cora begs, her voice catching. In the short time he’s known her he’s never seen her so raw. So bereft.

He steadies himself with a breath and nods at her.

“That you should run and never look back.”

“What else?” she asks.

“Nothing,” Stiles shakes his head. “I swear.”

“Bullshit,” Cora snaps, voice raising again. She tries to step forward, anger fuelling her movements, actually dragging Derek with her this time. Stiles takes an automatic step back, jarring his aching body against the metal frame of the examination table. Scott immediately steps forward between them, one hand swiftly placed against his wildly beating chest. “My mother wouldn’t make you watch my family burn to death for no reason. What. Did. She. Say?”

“Nothing, I swear Cora,” Stiles pleads, voice tightening in his throat. “Just to run and never look back and the signing…”

“Signing?” Scott asks abruptly and Stiles hadn’t even realised he’d said that allowed or even remembered it. It surprised him as much as it did everyone. Scott turns to look at him, hand retracting slightly and Stiles feels lost at the sudden loss of contact, like his legs would buckle at any minute and he would fall back into the suffocating flames. He reaches out with twitchy fingers, snagging Scott’s shirt and twisting it between his fingers.

“Stiles?” Deaton prompts him.

“She signed something to me,” Stiles nods, ignoring the way Scott’s staring at him with both an angered and concerned face. “I don’t know what it means. I don’t even know signing.”

“Is this the first time this has happened?” Deaton asks.

Stiles shakes his head.

“Not with Talia Hale, no…” Stiles admits.

“Go on…”

“It was a couple of weeks ago,” Scott’s the one to answer. “He spaced out in class, wrote _‘wake up’_ over and over. I just thought it was a PTSD thing,” Scott looks so guilty and Stiles can’t bring himself to look him in the eye because of it. “Dude, why didn’t you tell me about the dreams?”

Stiles shrugs and rubs his face tiredly. “It’s not your fault,” he says instead. “Besides, I was advocating the ‘ignoring the problem until it goes away’ approach. It’s a method I’ve been perfecting.”

“Dude,” Scott snorts at him. “You’ve never run away from anything in your life.”

Stiles grins, despite the circumstances they’re in, hoping to diffuse the situation.

“Can you remember what they signed,” Deaton asks, bringing both their attention back.

Stiles nods immediately. It had been ingrained in his retinas since that day in Coach’s class.

He brings his shaky hands up between them, bringing his fingers around in a loop, touching his chin. It’s not perfect, but by the look on Deaton’s face, it’s good enough.

“When is a door not a door,” Deaton says out loud.

“When it’s ajar,” Scott answers and Deaton nods.

“A riddle?” Stiles asks incredulous, forehead screwing up in a frown. “The answer to the freakin’ party in my head is a riddle?”

His head feels like cotton candy, buzzing, and he barely hears Deaton talk. He makes out ‘ _opened’_ ‘ _door’_ and ‘ _mind’_.

“… and you each need to close it.”

“A door into our minds,” Stiles murmurs.

“Why sign it though,” Scott asks. “Why not write it or say it.”

“I can’t always read in dreams,” Stiles points out and it’s only now that he’s realising he’s not always dreaming when it happens. “Sometimes I’m even awake.”

Scott looks stricken again and Stiles immediately pulls him closer, an apology already on his lips.

“The dead can’t always communicate in the way they want,” Deaton says before Stiles can open his mouth. “So they have to find other ways.”

“But signing?”

“Laura,” Derek speaks up and Stiles jumps a little. Both Hales have been so quiet he’d almost forgotten they were still there.

“She had a boyfriend who was deaf,” Cora continues when she sees that Derek can’t. “They were seeing each other when she died. Mom learnt to sign for whenever he came over.”

“I’m sorry,” Stiles says again and flinches when Derek throws an angry look at him.

“Stop apologising,” Scott huffs at him and then turns back to look at Deaton. “Is this normal? For the dead to speak to a spark?”

“It’s not uncommon,” Deaton nods. “Especially for Emissaries.”

“I’m going to an emissary?” Stiles asks. His voice sounds so small right now that he can’t ever imagining being one. “Scott’s emissary?”

He hears someone snort but by the look on both Cora’s and Derek’s face it could be either.

“Probably,” Deaton says.

“Absolutely,” Scott nods enthusiastically and a little warmth flutters in his stomach.

“My concern is that it was Derek’s pack that reached out to you though,” Deaton says, a pinch of worry on his normally calm face.

Stiles swallows nervously.

“What do you mean?” Scott asks.

Stiles glances at Derek and Cora again. They’re wearing matching looks of agitated concern.

That can’t be good.

In fact, it’s damn well worrisome.

“An emissary – a trained one – I might add will reach out to the pack’s ancestors to find guidance and answers,” Deaton explains. “It normally takes a lot of meditation and a completely different plane of existence.”

“Sounds like an episode of Buffy,” Stiles mutters.

“Stiles…” Derek warns, voice tightening.

“You know the episode I’m talking about, Scotty?” Stiles continues, not really liking where any of this is heading.

“Stiles,” Scott says, shaking his head at him and furrowing his brows the way he usually does when he was both worried and annoyed at him.

“Fine,” Stiles sighs loudly and waves a hand towards Deaton. “Go ahead and tell us of the impending doom.”

“Stop it,” Scott admonishes him before nodding at Deaton to continue.

“It’s normally very difficult to get to get to that level. You shouldn’t even be this receptive.”

“The nemeton?” Derek asks.

“It’s probably amplified it,” Deaton nods. “But in all my years of being one myself, and the training before that, I’ve never seen a pack’s ancestor reaching out like this.”

Stiles feels the air shift around him. It’s charged and light and he suddenly feels like he’s lost he’s grounding again

Scott’s hand finds his arm and he’s grateful because it’s like he’s being tugged back into place.

“It’s a warning, isn’t it?” Scott asks. Stiles doesn’t have to look at Deaton to know he’s nodding. “They’re warning us.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

It goes quiet for a few days.

Stiles, blessedly, doesn’t have any weird dreams or visions or whatever the fuck he’s been having.

Lydia goes into research mode and gives him strict orders not to lift a finger, other than whatever was required for school and eating and drinking and breathing. She gets it into her head that any heightened emotion or stress would make the situation worse. And Deaton has to agree with her. Of course he would.

Scott goes predatory and super protective on all their asses and Isaac obliges.

Derek does routine visits to the nemeton, always finding nothing (in a discreet way of avoiding him he presumes).

Cora just plainly avoids him until she doesn’t and it kind of takes him being a complete dick to Isaac to bring it to a head.

 

 

* * *

 

 

It hasn’t happened yet but he can feel it building.

Like a pressure behind the eyes.

A buzzing in his head.

He wants to put a stop to it before it gets out of hand so he ditches class and finds himself in front of the wall memorial for all the students and teachers who have died over the past year.

He glances at Heather’s photo and pauses at Erica’s with hesitation but doesn’t stop until he reaches Boyd. They were never that close but there was always something zen about him that Stiles liked. No matter what the situation, Boyd always had a calming effect that left him feeling a little bit better about the said situation.

He doesn’t know what’s going to happen but he’s reaching out to Boyd’s picture before he’s even thought of the consequences, fingertips lightly grazing it.

He tries opening his mind. Imagining little Boyd receptors but all he feels is the smoothness of the photo, the curled edges of the paper. He closes his eyes and thinks of himself being drawn into the photo, towards a smiling Boyd, eyes full of warmth.

A hand comes down hard on his shoulder and Stiles spins, shoving whoever it was away.

“Whoa,” Isaac says, hands up defensively. “I was just checking to see if you were okay.”

“Fuck off,” Stiles snaps at him.

Okay, yeah. A little bit on the rude side.

“Am I interrupting something,” Isaac grins at him, ignoring the sentiment. He glances at where Stiles hand had previously been resting. “Oh shit. You weren’t having an episode were you?”

“I said fuck off!” Stiles spits out. He tries to push past Isaac but the werewolf refuses to move.

“I just wanted to see if you were okay,” Isaac says again, seemingly unfazed at Stiles words.

“Well, you’re not being helpful,” Stiles fumes at him. “In Fact you’re the furthest thing from being helpful. You’re pretty useless…” Stiles anger gets the better of him and he shoves at Isaac’s chest – hard and with malice, “You’re pathetic.”

Isaac’s eyes flash a gold-ish yellow, hand clamping around Stiles own flailing arm. Stiles barely gets a protest out through his lips when he’s suddenly blinded by a white hot pain.

He gasps out, coughing at the acuteness of it, eyes blinking the whiteness away only to find himself at a dining table he didn’t remember sitting at.

“Isaac?” he calls out, uncertain.

“What?” the man at the far end of the table laughs.

Stiles side eyes the photos on the cabinet to his left. He recognises a younger Isaac with an older boy. Camden Lahey.

His attention is drawn back to the man talking in front of him.

Isaac’s father.

He’s talking but Stiles can’t hear everything. He’s not sure if it’s because he’s having an ‘episode’ as Isaac had put it or the hammering of his own heart, so loud and panicked in his ears.

Something about grades

About being disappointed.

Stiles manages to scramble away from the table when the glass tumbler is launched at his head.

He hears Isaac’s voice loud in his head.

_“You could have blinded me.”_

A memory – he knows this because Scott’s told him about the last time Isaac had seen his father alive – but it’s not because at this point he should be running away and out of the house. Lahey shouldn’t be grabbing him by the back of his shirt and dragging him across the kitchen floor.

The basement door shouldn’t be kicked open. The flickering light shouldn’t be flooding the room with a foreboding warning. He most definitely shouldn’t be the one to be dragged down the stairs.

Stiles catches sight of the freezer out of his peripheral vision.

“Wait!” Stiles protests in the grip. He twists ferociously. “I’m not Isaac. I’m not Isaac!”

Lahey doesn’t say anything, twisting both their bodies and shoving Stiles so that he hits the side of the freezer hard. As soon as he straightens he tries to spin and run. He’s backhanded for his troubles and practically falls backwards into the now open freezer. The older man uses the momentum to shove Stiles completely over and into it, until there’s the feel of cold, raw meat pressing painfully into exposed skin.

“No!” Stiles protests. “Wait!”

The lights still flickering, just enough to illuminate a few scratched words into the underside of the freezer door. For once, Stiles isn’t happy that he can read them.

_DON’T LET THEM IN_

Stiles is screaming before Lahey has even closed the door.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Stiles comes back to himself in the middle of the school hallway, mouth open in mid-scream, Isaac’s claws still wrapped around his arm.

He can hear the sound of distant doors opening. People emerging.

“Let go,” Stiles says calmly, when he can breathe again. Isaac is staring at him wide-eyed. “People are watching,” Stiles points out and then lowering his voice he all but hisses. “Put your fucking claws away and let go.”

Isaac retracts quickly, looking equally shame faced, concerned and angered.

Stiles starts walking away as soon as he knows Isaac isn’t going to stop or follow him.

 

 

* * *

 

 

He’s still walking nearly twenty minutes later. He’s made it to the town centre.

Scott caught up with him almost immediately. Cora appears five minutes later.

He refuses to answer any of their questions and tries to tune out the bickering going on between the pair. Something about tactics and what to do next and Stiles hasn’t got any energy left to try and dispel the obvious hostility between the two.

“He’s not fine,” Cora is protesting and Stiles rounds on both of them in a sudden flair of anger.

“Will you two just not,” he snaps at them before addressing Cora. “Why are you hear anyway? You don’t even go to school.”

“I was in the vicinity,” Cora shrugs dismissively. “I heard you scream.”

“Vicinity?” Stiles asks suspiciously, “Like stalking?”

“I wasn’t stalking.”

“Don’t worry,” Stiles tells her, voiced laced with sarcasm. “It’s a Hale thing.”

“I wasn’t stalking,” Cora repeats.

“Making up for the whole avoiding thing?”

“I’m not avoiding anything.”

“You kind of were,” Scott offers with a shrug.

“A Hale thing,” Stiles nods at her.

“I’m not…” Cora starts to growl at him. He feels himself grin at her. It feels nice. A little bit of the old him.

“Denial,” he says over his shoulder as he turns to walk away. “Also a Hale thing.”

“None of those are Hale things,” Cora protests after him.

“Yeah they are…” he starts to say, only his words drift away.

The air suddenly feels charged again. The buzzing is back.

Oh god. Not again. Not so soon.

Everything slows. Sound and movement, like he’s moving through molasses.

There’s a woman, middle aged and blonde, heading towards him. He vaguely recognises her.

“Stiles?” he hears Scott’s distorted words sluggishly reach his ears.

“What’s wrong?” Cora asks.

The woman moves closer. She’s distracted, hand rummaging through her bag for something. She looks up just as she’s about to pass, her eyes flashing in recognition. It’s Mrs Reyes, Erica’s mom. The last time he’d seen her was at the memorial service the school had held.

Their arms brush as they pass each other and Stiles stares at it in fascination until the buzzing becomes too loud and he’s suddenly being wrenched away. The sound increases until everything else fades.

 

 

* * *

 

 

He’s in gym class on an artificial wall.

 _Erica_? he asks.

_Can you just tell me what the fuck is going on without being dick?_

It’s probably not a good idea to cuss the dead because in the next second his whole body is seizing on the wall and he’s falling, only Scott isn’t there to break his fall like he was with Erica, and he hits the floor with a sickening thud. He feels bones break and legs twist at unnatural angles.

Blood bubbles up from his lips.

Erica’s voice bubbles up with it.

_“Don’t let them in.”_

 

 

* * *

 

 

When he opens his eyes Erica’s mother is looming over him. The strap of her bag is pushed between his teeth. Scott and Cora are flanked at his side. There’s a growing crowd of people around him.

“I’m okay,” he says after spitting out the strap, voice slurring a bit. He tries to push himself up only to be pushed back down by Mrs Reyes.

“No, don’t get up,” she says and attempts to smile reassuringly at him. “I know what I’m doing. My daughter had epilepsy.”

Stiles squawks at that and pushes himself further away.

“I’m okay,” he says again and staggers up. Thankfully he stays up right. “See, good as new.”

“You should probably go the hospital,” Mrs Reyes suggests, gathering her bag and mangled strap up.

“No, seriously, I’m fine…” Stiles says and then because he realises he never had the chance to stay it at the memorial he adds - “I’m sorry about Erica.”

He drags Scott away before she can respond, Cora trailing behind.

“Maybe you should go to the hospital,” Scott says, wrapping an arm around his shoulders.

“No,” Stiles says quietly.

“You just had a seizure,” Scott points out like he might have already forgotten.

“Just take me to Deaton’s.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Deaton isn’t much help.

All he could suggest was that the spark thing was making Stiles more receptive to past and present pack members, especially when he was feeling overly emotional.

Lydia just looks at him pointedly, like it was science, and not a supernatural mine-field.

 

 

* * *

 

 

It’s two days later when his dad asks him about it.

“Did something happen?”

Stiles stops mid-chew of his dinner and puts his fork down, swallowing painfully. It’s a rare night that they get to eat together. His dad has the night off. Stiles has convinced Scott to leave his side long enough to actually do some of his own studies, although, secretly, he’s convinced that he might be having a tentative first date with the new girl, Kira, despite Stiles misgivings.

“Happen?” he asks, feigning ignorance. “No?”

“Care to explain why my deputies got several calls about someone matching your description having a seizure in the middle of town,” his dad says it nonchalantly, but his eyes are full of worry. “Erica Reyes mother was adamant it was you.”

“Would you believe me if I said it was supernaturally induced,” Stiles asks with a shrug.

“Unfortunately yes,” his dad declares with a sigh and nods at his son to continue. “Out with it, kid.”

Stiles tells his dad the events of the last few weeks. The dreams that he doesn’t know about, the waking dreams, the events from Derek’s loft, his heightened emotions, and finally, his newly developing spark.

His dad stays silent through it all.

“So you have this spark thing?” his dad asks. “You’re going to be an emissary.”

“Looks like it,” Stiles says, stabbing at his salad leaves through a lump of chicken. “Just not yet.”

“Stiles?”

He drops his fork and buries his face in his hands, feeling a familiar tremor course through his frame.

“It’s okay,” his hears his dad say. “I’ll talk to Deaton. You don’t have to worry about anything.”

“Of course I do,” Stiles argues, dropping his hands away. “They’re warning us. They’re warning me. Something bad is going to happen.”

“Then we’ll stop it,” his dad tells him firmly.

“What if it’s already happened,” Stiles shakes his head. “Deaton said we’d have a darkness around our hearts.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” his dad shakes his head.

“I’m scared, dad…” Stiles admits, finally pushing his food away. “I’ve changed. I don’t think I like me anymore.”

“What do you mean?” his dad asks, frowning. He looks so concerned it only causes him to feel guiltier. “I keep lying to you…”

“- well that’s not new,” his dad interjects with a scoff.

“- when there’s no need to,” he continues. “I’m irritable and angry. And selfish. I hardly ever ask about how the others are coping and I couldn’t even tell you how things are between Scott and his dad. I haven’t even asked him.”

“That’s understandable. You’ve had a lot to deal with.”

“I’ve been really mean to Isaac,” Stiles admits. “I mean, more than usual. I said some horrible things. Sometimes I feel like there’s something wrong with me in here,” he says, hitting his palm against the side of his head. He feels his eyes sting with tears. “Like maybe I’m not the nice guy anymore.”

“Hey. No,” he dad says, reaching across and grabbing at his hand. He tugs it down and lays their hands on the table in front of them, squeezing it tightly. “You’re a wonderful human being.”

Stiles smiles slowly at his dad, sad at the edges, and wiped at his watery eyes with his free hand. “That’s a really over the top thing to say.”

“No, it’s not,” his dad says, squeezing his hand again. “Don’t be ridiculous. You’re one of the most…”

 

 

* * *

 

 

“… nicest people I know,” Scott is telling him.

His head lurches up from the table that it’s resting on and he blinks in surprise. Disorientated and acutely freaking out at the same time.

He’s not at dinner with his dad anymore.

It’s lunch and he’s sat in the school cafeteria. There’s an uneaten lump of mac and cheese in front of him.

“Are you going to eat that?” Scott asks.

He feels his heart rate rocket and sees the immediate quirk of Scott’s head as it does.

“Stiles?” Lydia asks.

“Yeah?” he croaks

“Are you okay?” Scott asks for the entire set of eyes staring at him. Even Kira’s there, which sets him on edge even more, considering the last time she’d sat with them she’d given a very un-lifting talk, in the brightest of ways, about bardo and death. “Your heart rate just shot up.”

Stiles finds himself nodding and abruptly stands up.

“I need to call my dad,” he says. “I forgot about this thing that I need to talk to him about.”

“Okay?” Scott says, unsure. “You want me to come?”

“I don’t need you to hold my hand to make a call,” Stiles rolls his eyes at his friend.

“Okay, if you’re sure.”

Stiles nods again.

“Are you going to eat that?” Scott asks again, eyeing the un-touched food.

“Knock yourself out,” Stiles pushes the plate across the table.

He uses the distraction of food to make his escape and it’s not until he’s out of the building completely and leaning against the furthest tree he could find before the panic attack fully hits.

He doesn’t know what happened.

How it happened.

He can’t remember anything.

Just his dad holding his hand. Reassuring him.

And then _now_.

His hands are trembling by the time he’s managed to dig his phone out.

“Dad?” he croaks, voice unwilling to settle into calm and non-plussed.

“What’s wrong?” his dad asks, voice on full alert. “Are you having a panic attack?”

“Tell me we had dinner last night?” Stiles asks instead. “We talked, right?”

“Stiles? What’s going on?”

“Just tell me,” Stiles pleads again. “I need to hear you say it.”

“Of course we did,” his dad says. “We had dinner and you talked. A lot. And then you practically fell asleep over your food,” his dad snorts loudly in his ear. “You’re a heavy ass kid to be hauling to bed.”

He doesn’t remember.

“I did?” Stiles says and then more firmly. “I did. I know I did.”

“Stiles? What’s going on? Are you having a panic attack?”

“Not anymore,” Stiles says, feeling his heart rate slow.

“Do you want me to come and get you?” his dad asks.

“No. I’m okay now.” He knows he isn’t. Not really. Not with this new development. “I’m not feeling too well though. I was going to go home. I can take the bus.”

“Okay,” he’s surprised when his dad agrees. “Sign yourself out and take yourself home. I have a problem here that’s brewing so I won’t be home until late.”

“Thanks dad,” Stiles sighs loudly into the phone.

“Just stay home tonight, kid…” his dad instructs him, worry in his tone. “Don’t go looking for anything new.”

 _Ha_ , Stiles thought in ironic humour, he doesn’t need to look for it anymore.

“I was just going to sleep,” Stiles reassures him. “I think I could sleep for ever.”

“Good,” his dad says. “You need it. You haven’t been sleeping right for ages now.”

“I know,” Stiles says. “I’m trying.”

“I know you are,” his dad tells him, strong and encouraging. “Look… I have to go, something just came up.”

“Nothing serious I hope?”

“Nothing for you to worry about. Go home and sleep.”

Stiles has to trudge back to the school to officially sign out and then waits another twenty minutes for a bus to come. He’d be home by now if he had the jeep.

When he gets home he makes a sandwich, which tastes like cardboard, and heads up stairs to his room. He sacks out on the bed, crawling under the covers, and falls into a heavy sleep. For once it’s real and genuine and lacks any dreams, more a sign of how unhealthily sleep deprived he’s been, than anything else.

He rouses in the early hours when the bed dips and a hand rests against his forehead.

“Hey, kid…” his dad’s rough voice, exhausted, washes over him. “You feeling better?”

Stiles rolls over and smiles sleepily at him. His dad is still in his uniform. His face drawn with both tiredness and worry.

“Hmm,” Stiles mumbles. “A little.”

“Have you eaten?”

“Made a sandwich,” Stiles shrugs, struggling to sit up. “I didn’t make you anything. Sorry.”

“You getting some healthy sleep is better,” his dad argues, pushing him back under the covers. “Besides, I ate at the station.”

“It better have not have had any grease on it,” Stiles grumbles, tuttering at his dad. He sinks back under the covers and doesn’t want to protest when he feels his dad straightening the covers against him. “Stop it, dad…” Stiles says half-heartedly. His hand sneaks out from under the cover and snags his dad’s hand. “I’m a little too old for that.”

“G’night kiddo,” his dad says instead, pressing a kiss to his hair. “Get some sleep.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

He doesn’t remember dreaming, but he still awakes the next morning signing the same words over and over, a silent scream on his lips.

 

_‘When is a door not a door?’_

 

 

_tbc_


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Turn the light off,” Derek hisses at Agent McCall, glancing back to see if the Oni had returned._
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> _The noise is back before he sees anything._
> 
>  
> 
> _“Derek,” Stiles breathlessly clings to him._
> 
>  
> 
> _“Turn it off,” he hisses again, but he knows it’s too late._
> 
>  
> 
> _The Oni appear, one by one, easily emerging through the door in their inky cloud, wispy tails floating innocuously around them._  
>  “Where’s my gun?” McCall slurs from his hospital bed, hand blindly reaching out and striking the lamp to the floor and plunging the room into darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay. RL and work and all that jazz.
> 
> The first part of the chapter briefly touches on some events of 3b canon, with a few tweaks here and there, up to Stiles going to Melissa at the hospital, then it goes AU! from there.
> 
> The scene with Derek and Stiles at the hospital was also inspired by 'Everybody Wants To Rule The World'. I have no shame. The particular words in question feature at the beginning of the chapter.
> 
> Also, I may have Stiles refer to Derek as a therapy dog. I mean no offence to Werewolves or therapy dogs ;D

 

* * *

 

_'There's a room where the light won't find you_  
 _Holding hands while the walls come tumbling down_  
 _When they do I'll be right behind you'_

 

 

He’s late arriving to school despite waking early.

His dad’s already left by the time he makes it to his jeep which only meant something big must have happened considering he wasn’t due to work until later.

When he arrives at school he spots a few cruisers situated in the parking lot and that foreboding feeling, the one he’d been feeling since he woke up, increased within his chest, tightening its hold. He manages to skedaddle past them all and rushes in through the main entrance.

The hallway is pretty much free of any mishap or mayhem, some students going about their daily business, rummaging through lockers, lounging against the wall, talking in hushed whispers. Some hover near door he’d just bolted through and watch the officers vacating their vehicles.

Apart from the cruisers, everything else seemed pretty normal, only Stiles knows that classes should have started by now and that pretty much is the biggest clue that something was wrong.

He spots Lydia by her locker, worrying her lip.

“Hey,” he says, skidding to a stop by her, breathless. “What’s going on?”

“I’m not sure,” she says with a shrug. He furrows his brows at her, concerned. Lydia looks pristine as usual – she has the cutest sweater on (that he knows she probably meticulously picked) and perfectly applied make up – but she’s strikingly pale. Too pale. “I’m guessing it’s to do with the Barrow situation.”

“Barrow?”

“Don’t you watch the news?” Lydia asks, giving him a surprised look. “It’s all over it.”

“I crashed pretty early,” Stiles says with a shrug and then quirks a sheepish smile. “I slept all night.”

Lydia breaks into a smile, a genuine happy and relieved look spreading out across her face. She punches him lightly in his arm. “Really? I’m proud of you, Stilinski. Keep it up.”

“So, Barrow?” Stiles prompts her, rubbing at his arm in mock pain.

“Oh, right,” Lydia nods and then she’s back to being distracted, worrying her lip again. “Eichen house patient. Escaped from Beacon Hills hospital last night. Likes to blow kids up with nail bombs.”

“Nice,” Stiles whistles, shaking his head. He spots his dad and Agent McCall at the end of the hallway in a heated discussion. “Sounds serious.”

“Hmm,” Lydia hums in agreement, rubbing at her temple.

“You okay?”

“Wha-,” she says, startled, looking around her. “- yeah, sure… it’s just the buzzing, like a damn fly.” She swats at her head.

Stiles catches her hand mid-swat.

“There’s no fly, Lyds…” Stiles says, entwining their hands together.

“Of course there is,” Lydia immediately says firmly and then looks around them, less sure. “You can’t hear the buzzing?”

“I don’t think anyone hears what you hear,” he tells her.

 

 

* * *

 

 

They end up on lockdown which epically fails due to Stiles fire alarm shenanigans.

He knows, when it’s all over, that he’s going to end up with a shit-load of detentions to tend with, but it’s something he has to do, for all their sakes.

He had taken one look at Lydia’s face and just _knew._

 _It’s Barrow,_ she says. _He’s here. I know it._

When his dad had failed to listen he’d been left with no other option than to set off the alarm and deal with the consequences later.

It worked – everyone ended up outside and then it was deemed to be safer if everyone was in their own homes.

Lydia comes home with him and studies his unsolvable board, wrapping endless red string around her own fingers. He can’t bear to see her look so miserable. “You’re never wrong about these things. I trust your instincts.”

Lydia raises unconvinced eyes at him from his bed.

“If you want I’ll go back to the school right now and search all night. If you tell me he’s there, then he’s there.”

They both go and Stiles follows Lydia unquestionably when she leads both of them to the chemistry room.

“What the hell is that?” Stiles asks, looking at a column of numbers on the chalk board.

“It’s an atomic code,” Lydia breathes. She pulls her phone out and snaps a picture.

“Can you send me that?” Stiles asks, rummaging through his pant leg. “I think I left my phone at home.”

She nods and hits a few buttons, “Done.”

Stiles walks closer to the board, “So it’s a code for something?” Stiles asks nervously, “Like what?”

Lydia shakes her head.

“Not something,” she says. “Someone.”

He watches her as Lydia writes the letters against each number, recognition hitting him.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The find Scott easily enough and Lydia realises the buzzing flies were not flies at all, but electricity.

It doesn’t take long for Stiles to figure out Barrow + electricity = the old electricity plant.

They go there to save the day, only Kira electrifies everything, including Barrow.

It’s only after that Stiles realises he’s lost his bat.

 

 

* * *

 

 

He should probably be more concerned about Kira and what she might be but he’s got his own shit to deal with and he’s pretty much content to let Scott figure it all out while he stays out of it. Firmly out of it.

He’s most certainly not going to help them break into the sheriff’s office and delete some incriminating photos. Especially when Scott’s dad is intent on getting his dad fired.

Nope. Not happening.

Only it’s _Scott_ and damn it to hell.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The thing is, Stiles isn’t an over thinker.

 _Oh_ , he’s more than a little drunk when he giggles against Caitlin’s lips, _who am I kidding? I am the biggest over thinker to ever over think._

The thing is, he starts over in his head, he shouldn’t be thinking about anything other than Caitlin’s explorative mouth and flighty hands.

But he can’t get those damn numbers and letters out of his head. K.I.Ra. K.I.Ra. K.I.Ra. Kira. She’s safe. She’s right over there with Scott. But he just can’t shake the weird, restless feeling, that had been with him ever since he and Lydia found the code in the first place.

He breaks away from the cute, petite girl in front of him, coming up for air. It distracts Caitlin enough to spot the keys in his hands and then she’s talking about phosphors and the conversation gets strangely scientific, despite the tipsiness between them.

Stiles sobers quickly with a dawning fear of realisation rising within him.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The numbers and Lydia’s handwriting are still there.

He writes the numbers next to the original ones. He rushes towards the end, his hands a shaking mess. It’s no mistake, they’re not complete matches, but Stiles can see it now, see the familiarity to it.

It was him.

He wrote the code to kill Kira.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The code has gone when Stiles tries to show Scott a few hours later.

Stiles must look and sound a mess because Scott’s insisting he go home and take a sick day.

He goes to the hospital instead.

There’s something wrong with his head.

He knows it.

He can feel it.

“Stiles? Are you okay?” Melissa asks him, standing in concern.

He steps away from her, stuttering a few responses, and shakes his head.

“I guess not really,” he finally says. His whole body is shaking and his heart rate sky rockets.

“Okay, kiddo…” Melissa nods reassuringly, sliding her arm around his back as she leads to an empty room.

He tells her his symptoms and he knows she’s worried, even though she doesn’t voice it and then she midazolam’s him into unconsciousness and everything gets fuzzy after that.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Stiles wakes sometime later. He knows it’s late. The room is dark, there’s a warm glow from the hallway coming through the open doorway. It’s just enough to show Scott sitting on the edge of his bed, hand distractedly playing with the blanket

“Hey,” he slurs tiredly, still half-under the effects of the drug. He tugs Scott’s arm closer, squinting his eyes, trying to focus on his sleeve. “Y’got blood on you.”

“It’s fine,” Scott says, pulling his arm back and patting Stiles leg through the blanket. “There was a little incident at my house. My dad got hurt. He’s fine now. He’s in a room down the hall.”

“Wha’ –cident,” Stiles fumbles over his words, licking his lips. His eyes slide shut against his will.

“It’s nothing,” Scott says.

“It’s never nothing,” Stiles mumbles sleepily.

“I’ll tell you in the morning,” Scott promises. He feels his leg being squeezed. “It’s late, bro. You need to get some more sleep.”

“Hmm,” Stiles doesn’t argue there.

Melissa appears in the doorway and Stiles smiles dopily at her.

“Thanks,” he tells her.

“It was nothing, sweetheart…” she tells him, coming over to the bed. She leans down and presses a kiss to his head. “Scott’s right. Go back to sleep.”

Stiles mumbles half-heartedly and rolls over onto his side, burrowing further under the covers. He feels Melissa rub at his back. It’s soothing and lulling and he soon finds himself drifting back to sleep, Melissa’s and Scott’s voices washing over him.

_“It’s been hours, Scott. Don’t you think something would have happened by now?”_

_“Maybe. Probably.”_

_“They turned up as soon as it was dark.”_

_“Yeah…”_

_“And wouldn’t it have been easier for them to come here first. When no one was here.”_

_“Lets go home, Scott. Like you said, it’s late and you look exhausted.”_

_“I need to check on Kira first. Make sure she got home okay.”_

_“Okay, we’ll do it on the way. I’ll pick Stiles up in the morning.”_

_Incident? They?_

Stiles should be more concerned by this but he’s already falling into the abys of sleep.

 

 

* * *

 

 

When he wakes for the second time he’s alone and he knows something is wrong.

A shadowy figure passes his door.

Stiles, naturally, gets out of bed and steps closer to the door.

“Hello?” he calls out uncertainly.

There’s no one there when he reaches the hallway and he calls out again. No one responds. There’s a weird sound that he doesn’t know how to describe. Echoe-y and crackling doesn’t even cover it.

He backs up around the corner into the next hallway.

The sound reverberates again. Louder than before, like it’s literally behind him.

Stiles whirls around.

And comes face to face with a fucking goddamn Ninja.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Derek isn’t a stalker, no matter what Stiles had to say. _Okay_ , so he had _followed_ Scott all day, but that was for the kid’s own good.

It wasn’t even creeping. It was being stealthy. Something he probably needed to teach Stiles about.

And he wasn’t creeping on Stiles either, despite the fact that he was sat in his SUV in the parking lot of the hospital. Scott had practically invited him to watch over a sleeping Stiles.

**[Scott] Checking on Kira. Stiles still sleeping.**

Okay, so maybe Scott hadn’t actually typed the words, but the implication had been there, and if he was being honest with himself, he was worried about the kid. Especially when Stiles was pretty much defenceless in a drug induced sleep.

He’s disrupted out of his thoughts by his phone ringing, Stiles name flashing up on the screen.

He answers immediately.

“Stiles?”

 _“I’m freaking losing my mind,”_ Stiles harsh voice cuts in before he can even ask what’s wrong. _“First I write a code that’s meant to kill Kira…”_

“What…?” he starts to ask.

“ _And then it was gone this morning, like it was never there in the first place,”_ Stiles continues, breathless voice pitching high in his ear. “ _And Scott thinks I’m going mad and maybe I am because Mrs McCall midazolamed me and I might have been able to figure some of this out if I hadn’t been sleeping through it…”_

“Stiles! Stop!” he snaps and strangely he does. “Breathe.” He hears a shuddering breath through the phone. “Good. Now tell me what the hell you’re talking about.”

 _“Ninjas, Derek. Fucking Ninjas,”_ he says as though they’ve always been a problem.

“Shit,” Derek breathes out, already out of the car and halfway across the parking lot. Of course it all has to kick off once Scott has left. “Okay, I’m already here actually.”

 _“You are?”_ Stiles asks with a suspicious tone. _“Why don’t you sound surprised?”_ He hears a grunt and then it alarmingly goes silent.

“Stiles? What’s going on?” he snaps into the phone, worry making his voice sound angry and irritated.

 _“- Sorry, sorry…”_ Stiles pants a second later. _“I dropped my phone. Had you worried there for a sec, Sourwolf? My bad.”_

“Where the hell are you?” he growls into the phone, rolling his eyes.

 _“Under the nurses station,”_ Stiles him. _“It’s not my best decision ever, but did I mention there’s ninjas, Derek. And swords…”_

“Just stay where you are,” Derek tells him.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Predictably, Stiles doesn’t stay under the nurse’s station.

Derek finds him midway down the hallway, back to him. One of the Oni’s is at the other end. Two more burst out of nowhere in an inky appearance, swirling into a solid form. Stiles jumps in surprise and stumbles back.

Derek gathers speed and reaches Stiles before the younger boy even realises he’s there. He shoves him roughly into the hallway that intercepts between the two and Stiles lets out a small unmanly shriek.

Derek presses both their bodies up against the wall, sliding his hand up and over Stiles too loud mouth.

“Derek?” Stiles mumbles quietly behind his hand.

“Shh,” Derek quietly hushes him. “Quiet.”

They watch as the Oni silently move past the hallway, the inkiness swirling with their moves, their crackling, eerie noise drifting with it.

When they have each passed, Derek silently pulls Stiles backwards, hand still pressed over his mouth until they reach a room. It’s dark enough that they might not be seen. He shoves Stiles away. He doesn’t even try to stop his momentum and sinks to the floor, body pressed against the hospital room wall.

“What’s going on, Derek?” Stiles whispers furiously, eyes glinting up at him from the darkness. “What are they?”

“They’re called the Oni,” Derek tells him quietly. He’s standing between Stiles and the door, looking over his shoulder at him. “They’re here to find someone who’s not themselves.

Stiles frowns up at him. “Like possessed?”

“Kind of,” Derek nods. “They turned up at the rave last night and this evening at Scott’s.”

“Everyone’s okay though, right?” Stiles asks, worriedly.

“Yeah,” Derek nods down reassuringly. “Everyone’s fine, but we’ve got to keep quiet okay.”

Stiles nods at him before his eyes widen in fear. Derek whirls back to see an Oni pass the closed door.

The noise crackles again, louder still, almost melodic.

“Can you hear that?” Stiles hisses in fear. He feels a hand grab the bottom of his pant leg and twist.

“The noise?” Derek asks, nodding. “Yeah.”

“No,” Stiles shakes his head aggressively. “They’re saying _‘who are we after’_ over and over.”

“I can’t hear that, Stiles…” Derek shakes his head. “You’ve got to keep quiet.”

“I can hear it,” Stiles shakes his head again, releasing his pant leg to clutch at his head. “Who are we after, who are we after…” his voice catches on a sob and hitches again.

“Stiles,” Derek pleads, dropping down to the floor and catching both hands in his own, tugging them away from where he’s trying to clutch at his hair. “Be quiet.”

“When is a door not a door,” Stiles whispers, tears spilling over and down his cheeks. “When is a door not a door. When is a door not a door.”

“Shh, Stiles…” Derek tries to soothe him into silence, one hand sliding from the top of his head and down, coming to rest against the back of his clammy neck.

The lamp in the corner of the room suddenly bursts to life, flooding the room with a dull light.

Stiles jumps at the suddenness of it and practically flings himself against Derek.

“A Stilinski,” a voice slurs next to the bed. Of course, the room wasn’t empty. Derek should have realised this but his senses are completely overwhelmed with all of Stiles. Of all the rooms they could have bundled themselves into it had to be Agent McCall’s. “In the middle of it all…”

“It’s just a dream,” Stiles voice cracks at the agent. He’s still pressed a little too closely against him, but Derek doesn’t try to push him away. “Go back to sleep.”

“Turn the light off,” Derek hisses at Agent McCall, glancing back to see if the Oni had returned.

The noise is back before he sees anything.

“Derek,” Stiles breathlessly clings to him.

“Turn it off,” he hisses again, but he knows it’s too late.

The Oni appear, one by one, easily emerging through the door in their inky cloud, wispy tails floating innocuously around them.

“Where’s my gun?” McCall slurs from his hospital bed, hand blindly reaching out and striking the lamp to the floor and plunging the room into darkness. Stiles hand immediately grabs at his pant leg again.

“Wait!” Derek barks out, hands out between him and the Oni. There’s just enough light from hall to wash over the room. “We’re not going to fight you.”

“We’re not?” Stiles asks in disbelief.

The Oni hesitate in their approach and tilt their heads quizzically in Derek’s direction.

“No, we’re not,” Derek says. There’s no point in fighting. Everyone who has had only got hurt. “They tested the others and everyone is fine.”

“But what if I’m not, “ Stiles says. He twists his pant leg again, tight enough that it pulls at his skin. “What if they _actually_ kill me?”

“Then I’ll personally decapitate them with their own swords,” Derek promises, looking down at him. He offers a hand, outstretched towards him. “You trust me, right?”

There would have been a time when Stiles would have said no, but he hopes that now wasn’t one of them.

“Okay,” Stiles says, head bobbing up down. Derek can see that he’s still uncertain. He takes the offered hand and raises to his knees.

The Oni once again approaches, forming a V figure, as the one at the front of the formation reaches out a black hand to Stiles exposed neck.

As soon as the hand touches skin, though, something happens. It’s not like Scott or Kira, who simply went rigid and then fell limply to the floor. There’s an explosion of light that erupts up between Stiles and the Oni, engulfing the black shadowy figure, until light explodes from it’s chest and simply evaporates into nothingness.

The force of it wrenches Stiles out of his grasp, sending him sprawling backwards until his body was sliding down the wall in undignified heap.

“What…” Derek asks, immediately dropping to his knees and reaching for him. The only thing that Stiles seemed to share with the others was the freezing skin and the immediate shivering. “The hell just happened?”

Neither of the other two Oni’s seem to react at all. They both stood still, unflinching.

One of the Oni steps forwards and Stiles flinches in Derek’s hold, aware enough that there was still some level of danger. The Oni crouches slowly, head tilting questionably, hand hovering mid-air over Stiles. The noise from before crackles and pops until it forms into vowels and then the room is filled with a strange stilted and breathless sound. _“What. Are. You?”_

And then they were gone.

“Fucking Ninjas,” McCall mutters to himself before promptly passing out.

“Stiles,” Derek ignores the freshly passed out man to the half-passed out teen in his arms, shaking him.

Stiles weakly pushes Derek away, his head lolling heavily against the wall in the opposite direction, mumbling to himself, but loud enough for Derek’s wolf-hearing to pick it up.

_“Don’t let them in in. Don’t let them in. Don’t let them in…”_

 

* * *

 

 

Derek drives over to Lydia’s when Stiles comes too enough to talk.

Stiles sits slumped in the passenger seat, mumbling about leaving the jeep at that _god forsaken place._

“So let me get this right,” Derek says, ignoring him. “You think you wrote a code to tell Barrow to go after Kira?”

Stiles nods.

“Because your handwriting matched?”

“Pretty much,” Stiles shrugs.

“Pretty much or it is your handwriting?” Derek shakes his head and waves a hand at him. “Because there is a difference, you know.”

“What are you trying to imply?” Stiles sighs. “That someone tried to make it look like my handwriting?”

“I’m just trying to get things straight in my head,” Derek tells him. “That’s all.”

“It’s not even straight in my own head!” Stiles laughs a little hysterically, hand fluttering up to his face.

“I know,” Derek says, resting a hand on the boys shoulder and squeezing. “I know. Don’t start freaking out on me.”

“Again, you mean…” Stiles mutters miserably. Derek tries to keep it light and offers a smirk. They both know Stiles has done enough freaking out to last a lifetime.

“So, we’re going to Lydia’s to prove you wrote it?”

“No,” Stiles shakes his head at him, like he’s stupid. “We’re going there to prove it was there in the first place.”

“I saw your photo, Stiles. You don’t have to prove anything to me.”

“I know,” Stiles says after a stretched silence. “But she might be able to help me.” He shakes his head, rubbing his face tiredly. “This isn’t normal,” he pauses and laughs into his hands. “I mean, on contrast to everyone else, this is abnormally abnormal.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Derek says as he pulls up outside Lydia’s house.

Lydia’s mom answers the door.

“Stiles…”She greets him warmly as she always does. Her eyes shift over to Derek. “And…?”

“Derek,” Stiles fills in for her. “I had a weird seizure the other day. You heard about that, right?” Stiles rambles at her, not really giving her the chance to reply. “Idiopathic, you know. Right out of the blue. Dad’s a little nervous of me out on my own, so Derek’s like my version of a therapy dog, in case anything happens again…”

Derek smiles at her, only chancing a glare at Stiles when she glances away.

“Oh, sure…” Mrs Martin nods. “Makes sense.”

“Mom,” Lydia calls, appearing in the hall behind her. “It’s fine. Stiles text me to say Derek was bringing him over.

“It’s late,” Mrs Martin frowns. “Really late.”

“I know, I know...” Lydia says, rolling her eyes. “I left one of my essays at Stiles place and I’ve been nagging him all day to bring it over.”

“Okay,” Mrs Martin frowns at them all and Stiles tries to smile the biggest smile he could muster. All Derek can see is how brittle it looks. “Five minutes and then bed.”

“Thanks Mom,” Lydia says brightly.

“Therapy dog?” Derek hisses at Stiles quietly, once Lydia’s mom had disappeared upstairs.

Stiles flashes a grin at him and lets Lydia manhandle him into the dining room.

“Okay, what hell happened and why does he look like total shit?” Lydia says, directing a stony glare at Derek. She pushes Stiles into the first available chair.

Stiles gives her the cliff-note version and Derek cuts in with the more specific details, her eyes widening in surprise. He watches as she immediately reaches out and grabs his arm.

“So, you’re not tested yet,” she finally says when they both come to a stop.

“I don’t think it _could_ test me,” Stiles says.

“Lydia?” Derek says, drawing her attention away from her friend. “Stiles showed me the photo.”

“What photo?”

“The one you took the night that you found the code.”

“I didn’t take a photo,” Lydia shakes her head, confused.

“What are you talking about?” Stiles straightens up. “You were there. You sent it to me because I had forgotten my phone.”

Lydia’s looking at both of them even more confused than before.

“I was there, Stiles. I saw the code,” she pauses and glances between the two of them. “But I didn’t take a photo.”

Her eyes crinkle in concern when Stiles starts shaking his head, hands reaching up to clutch it again. Muttering _“it doesn’t make sense. You sent it to me.”_

“Stiles, give me your phone,” she orders sharply, practically snatching it from his shaking hands as soon as he fumbles it out of his pockets.

“Hey, it’s okay…” Derek whispers, hand going to rest against the back of Stiles neck again. He still feels freezing to the touch. He glances over to Lydia who’s scrolling through Stiles photos until she finds what she’s looking for, thumb hovering over it. She pales instantly. “Lydia?”

“This wasn’t even taken the night we were there,” she says.

“What do you mean?” Stiles voice cracks. He tries to surge forward but Derek easily pulls him back and takes the phone from Lydia’s hand.

“Derek?” Stiles asks, voice broken, lost of any optimism he might still have had.

“She’s right,” Derek finally says. “The timestamp is different.”

Derek turns the phone to show Stiles the photo details. He watches what color was left drain from his face, jumping up from the chair and knocking it over as he scrambles backwards. He’s gone and out of the front door before either Derek or Lydia can react.

Derek jumps up sprinting after his retreating form, but even with his speed, he’s not quick enough to catch the SUV from peeling away.

“Stiles!” Lydia yells, hot on his heels.

Derek stares down at the timestamp again.

The timestamp that says the photo was taken 24 hours earlier than Stiles could recall.

 

 

* * *

 

_tbc_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will be updating this and Disturbia by the the end of Sept, beginning of October (I have some vaction time coming up) if not before.
> 
> :D


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, my bad. This update has taken forever. Between work and other things in RL I haven't really had much time for writing. So, updates on anything I am currently working on will probably be sporadic. Hopefully that won't be a turn off for all the peeps following it.
> 
> This here chapter is my homage to 'Agent McCall saves Stiles' only there's no basements or coyote dens, just a lot of luck.
> 
> This features a medical procedure. I am psychiatric nurse but I have minimal medical training so any mistakes are all googles. (see bottom for further info)

 

Lydia is exhausted. She’s spent most of the last four nights with Scott, Derek and Isaac looking for Stiles. They’d even had to fill in the Sheriff with the rest of the information that Stiles had only alluded to, Allison and Chris searching with him separately. They found no traces of their friend. The unanswered calls only increased their concern.

She can’t believe they left Stiles to face the oni on his own. She can’t believe Stiles is the dark spirit even less. The scream within tells her otherwise. This is _Stiles_ they’re talking about. Sweet. Funny. _Loyal_. Stiles’ sarcasm and dry wit may sound cruel and provoking at times but it was never _intentional._ Lydia was pretty sure there wasn’t even a bad bone in his body.

Derek had insisted that a trickster spirit didn’t care about any of these qualities, in fact they probably enjoyed feeding off it, creating chaos within one of the packs strongest assets. Whatever it was doing, whatever it was trying to achieve, Stiles was vulnerable in more ways than one.

Lydia knew that whatever the situation, whatever Stiles didn’t want the Sheriff knowing, he’d eventually _always_ call Scott, and so the more he didn’t hear from Stiles the more the worry grew.

Therefore, it was more than a little surprising to see her friend brazenly standing in the middle of history as though he’d never been missing in the first place. Brazenly was probably a too quick assumption – Stiles didn’t seem aware at all, standing and staring at an empty desk in front of him, hand shakily outstretched in front of him. His pallor was off and there was a disturbing amount of bruising around his eyes making him look a sickly pale.

Kira was at the front of the classroom, whispering furiously with her father, but was at her side in an instant.

“I was just about to call Scott,” she tells her. “He was here when we arrived.”

She ignores her in favour of approaching Stiles.

“Stiles?” she calls, hesitating.

Stiles lips are barely moving, a slight whisper breaking through but not enough for Lydia to hear. Lydia’s fully aware that the room is starting to fill up with other students. She knows that most of the faculty, if not all, already know about Stiles disappearing act and seemingly fragile mental state but it hadn’t been announced to any of her peers. Whether they knew or not, Lydia set a firm glare in the direction of a grinning student who seemed to take great delight in the scene Stiles was creating.

“Stiles!” she says again, raising her voice in an attempt to gain his attention.

Stiles moves away from the desk, completely ignoring her and heads down the aisle between the other tables instead, coming to a stop at the back of classroom. Lydia followed, calling his name again in a quiet whisper, feeling the entire room’s eyes follow her.

Stiles simply stared at the wall. All that stood there was a set of posters and announcements. Stiles eyes were unfocused so she knew he wasn’t looking at them.

“Stiles?” Lydia snaps. She doesn’t mean to sound so angry but she just wants him to stop, to stop the building audience from laughing at him. She knows what it it’s like to be the centre of _this_ type of attention. And he’s scaring her. This isn’t _her_ Stiles. This isn’t the Stiles who fiercely tried to protect her. Who was hell-bent on saving everyone. “Snap out of it.”

Stiles reaches out, hands up and signing.

Lydia takes a step back, alarmed. Scott had told her about this and she’s taken it upon herself to teach herself some ASL to confirm Deaton’s previous translation. She turns and locks eyes with Kira who already has her phone pushed to her ear. Mr Yukimura looks equally alarmed.

Stiles stops signing just as quickly as he started and plants his palm against the wall, fingers spread out, and eyes shut. He looks like he’s in a brief sea of calm. Or the eye of the storm, Lydia grimly thinks.

She inches forward but suddenly jumps with a yelp when Stiles eyes snap open.

“I don’t understand,” he whispers, face crumbling in distress. “I don’t understand. _Please_ …”

“Stiles!” Lydia say, finally deciding touch may help to anchor him to reality or at least offer some comfort. She touches her hand lightly to his shoulder

The result is instantaneous. Stiles sucks in a breath. His eyes are no longer unfocused, replaced with a rapid disorientated and terror.

“Ly-Lydia?” he asks uncertainly, unsure, as though he was worried it might be someone else.

“Where have you been?” she murmurs quietly, moving her hand and wrapping it around his bicep.

“Wha-?” he starts, clearly confused. She watches as his eyes dart around the room, taking in the milling students, the chalk-board, finally settling on Kira and her father at the front of the room. He turns and looks back at Lydia, shaking his head. “With you. And Derek.” He shakes his head again, hand fluttering to his mouth as though he was going to be sick.

Lydia wants nothing more than to grab him and pull him out of the room, away from prying eyes, or at least shove his shaking form into a near-by chair but she’s pretty sure both actions would leave him collapsed on the floor.

“What happened? How did I?...”

“You left,” Lydia tells him, squeezing his arm. “You took Derek’s car. We’ve been looking for you for days.”

She doesn’t know if it’s something she says or the situation suddenly becomes clearer to Stiles – even if it’s not to her– but he’s taking a determined step away from her.

“Stiles?”

“I need to go,” he tells her, turning away

“No,” she says, voice pitching in panic. She grabs at his arm, stalling his steps. “We just got you back.”

“Are you sure about that?” he asks. He turns to her with such an anguished look, one that was still lingering in the folds of hope. _Yes_ she wants to say but can’t bring herself to. She tries to ignore the memory of Scott’s voice in her own head – _‘there’s no hope’_ – feeling her own face crumple, tears falling as Stiles leans into her. “Because I’m not even sure I’m me.”

 _You’re Stiles,_ she wants to stay.

“Don’t follow me,” Stiles says, shaking his arm out of her hold and stepping further away. “Don’t call Scott either.”

 _You’re Stiles,_ she thinks as she watches him walk away, but at this point she’s not even sure if it was even his voice she was hearing.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Rafe McCall wasn’t someone to take not knowing things lying down easily. Quite literally. He’d discharged himself from the hospital two days ago, when it was obvious he wasn’t going to die and he was getting nowhere nearer to knowing about what the hell had happened.

Both Scott and Melissa were refusing to talk – or at least denying that they knew what had happened or why they would be attacked – and Stilinski had simply put it down to a home invasion. Stilinski seemed deliberately obfuscatory, which was surprising seeing as his son was missing.

McCall didn’t know if the two events were exclusively linked but with a lack of compliance, particularly from his own son and Stiles’ father, he couldn’t see how they weren’t.

Stiles had always been as obfuscatory as his father, more so with the stubborn streak he had, but within the convoluted way he spoke, there was always details, sometimes details amongst details, and if you broke it apart you could always find a truth within a truth. A confusing truth, but a truth nonetheless.

So, when it came to it, Stiles was the one to get answers from, even ones he might not want to hear. He already knew that there was something strange about Beacon Hills. It didn’t take analytical FBI statistics to realise there was an unusual rate of deaths and mysterious disappearances. Not to mention the ‘mountain lion attacks’. McCall can’t recall this being an issue when he was living here and it now seemed a convenient and easy explanation for anything deemed inexplicable.

He had a vague memory of Stiles in his hospital room the night he was attacked. Melissa tried to put it down to the drugs he was on, but it felt too vivid to have been a drug induced dream and of all the people he could have dreamt about he was sure his subconscious wouldn’t have summoned a seventeen year old hyperactive teen.

Stiles _had_ been there. He _knows_ it. He has no idea why he would be there, but he knows, _felt,_ that the kid had been scared. He-

 _Oh_.

He’s standing right in front of him. Right there on the sidewalk in the middle of the day. Staring straight out into the quiet road.

“Stiles?” he says, approaching the teen.

McCall repeats his name several times and the younger boy doesn’t respond until he firmly grasps his arm, afraid that the kid might step out into the road at the wrong time.

“Huh?” Stiles says, turning to look at him, blinking owlishly.

“You’re supposed to be missing,” McCall says with a gruff tone he wasn’t intending. “Everyone has been looking for you for days.”

“That’s what Lydia said,” Stiles says. He’s taken by surprise when his son’s best friend suddenly starts to cry, great big fat tear drops escaping. Stiles seems equally surprised and wipes at his eyes furiously.

McCall wasn’t particularly fond of the kid, not for a while at least, not since Stiles decided to develop an attitude, not since his mouth caught up with his brain, not since the kid decided he was old enough to smart mouth him about his lack of familial responsibilities. Sometimes the kid had been worse than Stilinski. But there was a time before that. A time when he’d been left dealing with scraped knees and sore tummy’s and headaches from too much sugar and a kid who’d had wade through the harsh realities of death and loss and grief.

It was that kid he was seeing now and those teary eyes that were looking at him.

“Lets get you to the station,” he says, tugging on his arm, unsure of how to make the situation better. “I’m sure your dad will be glad to see you.”

“No,” Stiles says quietly, pulling his arm free. He turns back to his previous position, staring ominously out into the road, wiping his eyes with the length of his sleeve. McCall gives him the moment anyway, watching as Stiles stops wiping at his eyes and starts pinching at the bridge of his nose as though he was warding off a headache.

McCall takes a step closer, wondering if Stiles refusal was a mere attempt at regaining his composure, or if there was another reason Stiles was standing precariously at the sidewalk edge. He wasn’t happy to leave the kid here either way.

“Look, I might not like you-“ he says

“Yeah? Well I’m not particularly fond of you either,” Stiles snaps.

“- but I don’t like the idea of leaving you here,” he continues.

“Why?!” Stiles yells, whirling around, stepping into his face. The sudden anger was unexpected but anything was better than having Stiles so close to stepping out into the road, accidental or not, even if there was no cars at the time. Stiles shoves at his chest, causing pain to flare out across it and settle in to his slinged arm. If Stiles realises he’s causing pain he doesn’t show it and shoves again, causing him to stumble back. “WHY DO YOU CARE? YOU LEFT! YOU LEFT SCOTT. YOU LEFT MELISSA. YOU HAD A FAMILY. YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO MAKE IT BETTER!”

McCall staggers back, gulping, unable to form words. He’d always known that Stiles had felt very strongly about what had happened, he’d always known that he was fiercely protective of his son, even at eight years old, but he can’t help but think this was more than just about him leaving Scott and Melissa.

“Stiles…” he tries, taking a step forward.

“YOU LEFT!” Stiles screams out, face red and blotchy from the force of it, tears still damp.

Stiles is suddenly screaming more, clutching his head and staggering away from his touch.

Right into the road.

Right into the road that has one solitary car heading directly to Stiles flailing form.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

_“Stiles.”_

_It whispers over him._

_Folds over him like a blanket._

_“Stiles.”_

_It’s warm._

_“Stiles. Please.”_

_Stiles doesn’t want to move, but he does it anyway because the voice is imploring him to, even if it doesn’t say it out loud._

_He rolls to his feet and suddenly the warmth is gone and the funny looking wall is back._

_A moving wall of shapes._

_He’d seen it more than once. The most recent in the back of the history classroom._

_It’s like plastic. Or rubber. Or latex._

_Faces push at it, mouths trapped in screams, hands reach but never break through. And there in the background is a silhouette. A woman. Signing over and over. Stiles knows it perfectly now but it doesn’t mean he understands it._

_“What?” he demands. “I don’t know what you want!”_

_He waits for the voice again but it never comes._

_Impatience wins out, because he’s just so damn tired all the time and all he wants is some real healthy sleep, and he yells at the always moving wall._

_“Just tell me!” he demands, hitting the wall with a fist. “Just tell me what y-“_

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

They end up on the opposite side of the road in a heap.

The car screeches past them, burning rubber as the driver frantically hits the brakes, mere seconds after McCall tackles Stiles out of harm’s way.

His shoulder silently screams in pain as they crash to the ground. Stiles is conscious but still clutching at his head in pain, turning his face into the asphalt and mumbling over and over. There’s a graze to his temple but no other obvious injuries.

McCall scrambles off him, planting his hand gently against his side.

“Stiles?” he says, shaking him.

Stiles words stumble over and over, going from _‘don’t let them in’_ to a stuttering _‘don’t… don’t… don’t’._

“Oh god,” the driver of the car flies out of the front seat. “I didn’t see him. He just stepped out in front of me.”

“I know,” McCall says with an impatient sigh. “I was there.”

It’s while he’s dealing with the panicked driver, satisfied that Stiles hadn’t been hit (he’d take him to the hospital after – it was obvious that the kid needed some psychiatric in-put), that he hears a startled yell.

“Stiles!”

Someone was approaching Stiles from where he’d left him on the sidewalk.

He’s leaning against a lamp-post head-lolling to one side, seemingly stuck in his own mantra, but the voice is familiar enough to gain the boy’s attention.

The man that approaches is older than Stiles – at least mid-twenties – but McCall doesn’t recognise him as one of the Stilinski’s deputies.

“What happened?” the man says, falling to his knees by the downed boy. He takes one look at the graze to Stiles temple and the open door of the car, sniffing the air – obviously smelling the burnt rubber of tires – before his eyes widen in alarm. “Did he get hit by a car?”

“No,” McCall says. He waves the driver away with a “You can go now” and turning back to the man who has his hands on the teen, fingers probing at Stiles head wound. He recognises him from the sheriff’s case files he had reviewed. Recognises him as the man that had been a prime suspect in more than one murder as well as remaining as a ‘person of interest’. “You’re Derek Hale.”

“You must be Scott’s dad,” Hale replies instead, glancing at him once before turning his attention back to Stiles.

McCall instantly stiffens. How the hell was Stiles – and his _son –_ associated with an ex-wanted felon?

“I’m a friend of the family,” Derek says. “I’ll take him to the hospital.”

Stiles bats Derek’s hand away and stumbles into another chant of “Don’t…. don’t… don’t,” and McCall doesn’t know if he’s just reverted back to his previous headspace or if he genuinely doesn’t want Hale touching him. Either way he’s suddenly blind-sided by a need to keep Stiles close. To not leave him alone with someone with a sketchy background at best.

“Look, I don’t know who you are,” he warns, bringing his good arm with a surprisingly steady aim. Derek blinks in surprise at the sudden gun being pointed in his direction before his mouth twitches in amusement, “or why you’ve been hanging around teenagers but there’s no way in hell I’m letting him leave with you.”

“He’s Derek Hale,” Stiles snorts with a lopsided grin. “You just said that.”

“Yes, Stiles. I am aware,” McCall says, never once taking his eyes, or his aim, away from Hale.

“Don’t shoot him,” Stiles states clearly, eyes more focused, speech more coherent. He turns and looks at Derek, patting his shoulder. “You should go. Go before it gets too bad.”

Hale squints his eyes at Stiles, suspiciously, as though he was reading something McCall can’t quite see.

“Stiles…” Hale starts.

“Just go,” Stiles insists and then he’s leaning into Derek’s side, whispering something into Hale’s ear.

He doesn’t give the older man a chance to respond, heaving a wobbly Stiles to his feet and helping him to his own car.

It was difficult driving one handed, but it was easier than waiting on an ambulance.

Stiles was calmer in the car, head pressed against the window, hand playing with the seat belt. Only the occasional, unintelligible murmur breaking the silence.

“Hey,” McCall says, unable to let go of the wheel he nudges him with his shoulder. “You with me, kid?”

Stiles lifts his head and turns to look at him, eyes wide.

“When’s a door not a door?”

It takes him by surprise and Stiles is looking at him with such an open expression that he knows he needs to give him an answer.

“I don’t know,” he shrugs. “A door is a door whether it’s open or not.”

Stiles contemplates this with a frown and then unexpectedly laughs. It’s good to hear, reminds him of when the kid was younger and carefree and running around his house with Scott chasing after him.

By the time they reach the hospital he know it won’t last. Stiles has gone quiet, looking like the scared kid McCall always thought he was.

There’s a flurry of activity, Melissa shouldering him aside to shine a light in Stiles eyes. Stiles complains that it hurts and then barfs all over himself. The doctor doesn’t’ appear fazed at all but Melissa clucks over him and Stiles lets her manhandle him out of his soiled hoodie and t-shirt and into an open backed hospital gown.

The doctor and Melissa throw medical jargon around until a familiar procedure sinks in.

“What?” he says, pulling Melissa aside. “You think he might have meningitis?”

“It’s not always used to diagnose that,” Melissa said, shaking her head. “John already knows this, but Stiles symptoms are similar to his mother’s before it got really bad.”

McCall feels himself pale.

“But…” he stumbles. “He’s just a kid.”

“This is one type of dementia that doesn’t care about age,” Melissa states, bitterness evident in her tone. “We need to arrange an MRI but that’s going to take a while so in the mean-time we need to rule out other _immediate_ risks.”

“Like?” McCall prompts.

“It doesn’t explain all the symptoms but sudden, blinding headaches, being sick, sensitivity to light, confusion, slurred speech and the fact that, although Stiles will deny it, several witnesses said that they saw him have a seizure, are indicative of a bleed on the brain.”

She lets the information sink in and then goes back to Stiles side.

“Stiles, honey. I know you’re scared but there’s a few tests we have to do to try and find out what’s wrong.”

“Hit me with it Mama McCall,” Stiles says opening his eyes, squinting in pain. His voice is still slurred slightly, curling around his tongue.

“The doctor wants to rule out a subarachnoid haemorrhage,” Melissa says quietly, clasping her hand around his. “Do you know what that is?”

“A bleed on the brain,” Stiles automatically answers.

Of course Stiles knew it what it was, McCall mused to himself. The kid was way too smart for his own good sometimes.

Melissa nods down at him.

“I don’t have that,” Stiles says quietly, voice an inflection of acceptance.

“We don’t know that yet,” Melissa shakes her head, voice hardening but remaining gentle at the same time.

“I’m starting to think it might be better if I _do_ have what my mom had. It’s better than the alternative,” Stiles admits.

And there the kid goes again. Always talking in circles. McCall frowns and pushes himself away from the wall, willing the kid to divulge more information, but comes to a stop when he hears Stiles voice, thick with emotion, continue to talk.

“But then I think of my dad,” Stiles says, voice cracking and raw with emotions. “I don’t think I can do that to him.”

“Don’t talk like that, Stiles…” Melissa says, leaning down to kiss his forehead. “We always figure things out in the end. Besides Scott won’t let anything happen to you.”

“He might not have a choice,” Stiles states, pulling his hand away. His gaze catches on McCall as though only now just realising he was still there. Stiles tears his gaze away and stares fixedly on the door.

“Lets get back to business, shall we?” Melissa states with a no nonsense voice, wiping at her own eyes. “We need to do a procedure called a lumbar puncture.”

“A spinal tap,” Stiles nods at her. “You want to stick needles into my spine.”

“I don’t want to,” Melissa shakes her head, correcting him. “But we _need_ to take a sample to test for any blood present in your spinal fluid before we take you for a CT scan.”

“And there’s me thinking you get off sticking sharp objects into people’s spines,” Stiles says, offering a weak grin.

“Only the mouthy ones,” Melissa rolls her eyes. She pats the side of the bed. “Scoot over.” Stiles moves over on the bed and pulls his knees to his chest when prompted.

“Where’s my dad?” Stiles asks, suddenly sounding like the traumatised eight year old McCall remembered.

“He’s on his way,” Melissa assures him. “He’s already given permission for the procedure but we need to do this. You’re just going to have to be a champ until he gets here and do this one without him.”

Stiles nods, biting his lip nervously, and glances back at the doctor who had positioned himself on the other side of the bed. “Okay, doc. Lets get this show on the road.”

“I’ll wait outside,” McCall announces to the room when he sees the doctor position himself over Stiles.

“Don’t go,” Stiles says to his treating back.

McCall turns around surprised to see Stiles staring back, looking almost ashamed that he’d even asked him not to leave.

“For Christ sake, Rafe…” Melissa snaps, “You’re the second closest person he has to a father figure. Get in here.”

McCall knows it’s true. For a period of time, before and after Claudia had died, Stiles had spent most of his time over at their house. He’d pick him up from school, tuck him in at night, and drop him off at school in the morning. Weekends had turned into weeks, and while Stilinski lost himself in his own grief and a bottle of whiskey, Stiles had grown to be more reliant on both Melissa and Rafe. Seeing Stilinski’s own battle with drink had only served as reminder to his own drinking habits. McCall can’t blame the Stilinski’s grief as being the sole reason for his own marital problems but dealing with Stilinski’s drinking and his young son’s trouble to adjusting to a life without his mother and, for a while, his father too, had certainly helped strain it.

It’s obvious now, the reason why Stiles rages at him each time he sees him, he didn’t just walk away from Melissa and Scott. He had walked away from Stiles too.

They’re a few minutes into the procedure (through skin and tissue and in between vertebrae) when Stiles starts to squirm and whimpers beside him.

“Can you try calm him down,” the doctor says, locking eyes over Stiles trembling body. “I’ve got a needle in his back. Bit hard to do when he’s moving around like that?”

“Staying still is a _bit_ hard to do when you have a _fucking_ needle in my spine,” Stiles pants out angrily. It takes whatever breath the kid has and McCall spots the first sign, witnessing them when he was younger, of a familiar panic attack.

“Hey,” he says, catching Stiles hand that is trying to tear its way through the cheap papery hospital sheet that he was curled up on. “Take it easy. You’re okay. It’s not even that bad.”

He wonders if it is.

_“You should go. Go before it gets too bad.”_

 

 

* * *

 

 

It’s nearly 24 hours later that he hears about the incident.

About the multiple electrocutions.

The power surge

And Stiles disappearing right out of the MRI machine.

And that’s when the chaos really starts.

 

_tbc_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know absolutely nothing about spinal taps/lumbar punctures, just that it involves needles in backs. There's really probably no reason why he should have had this procedure before any other tests, I was just lucky that some of his symptoms featured on the list and I made a promise to ChasetheWindTouchtheSky that I somehow would give a lumbarpuncture!stiles in a fic. Also I have no idea if someone would have a CT can before or after.  
> But hey ho, have spinaltap!Stiles!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some trigger warnings here. Suicidal ideation. Stiles might not do anything to indicate this but it's his lack of action and his intended destination that heavily implies this would be the end result throughout this moment in time. Derek is really the one to clarify this is what Stiles was intending to do tho, although no one says it out aloud.

Chapter 6

 

Cora leaves before Derek can tell her what is really happening with Stiles.

Her duffel bag is gone and there’s a note tacked to one of his kitchen cupboards.

_Derek,_

_I can’t deal with this._

_I’m sorry_

_Cora x_

 

He had palmed his phone, thumb hovering over her name, until he had shook his head, sliding it back into his pocket. They needed all the help they could get but he had, equally, wanted his sister safe. Derek was no stranger to trauma and he recognised the wild eyed terror that reflected in her eyes, particularly any time the fire and his family were mentioned.

Laura wasn’t here anymore. Derek had to step up to the plate and be responsible, even if it meant letting his kid sister run away again. Besides, it was safer for Cora to not be in Beacon Hills right now, especially now everyone knew it was a Nogitsune that they were dealing with. Kitsune’s might be tricksters, but Nogitsune’s were a different ball game all together.

Stiles had been missing for days now. He knew the Sheriff and his deputies were on high alert, running around after the dark trickster’s chaotic mind games, as well as the fall out of the power surge, at Stiles own hands, and Isaac’s subsequent electrocution, so Derek had skulked around trying to track the boy instead. Stiles, or the one wearing his skin, had masked his scent well, along with his own aura.

After tracking his abandoned SUV, and using Kira’s own knowledge about foxfire, he had retrieved Stiles bat and started following a man who was just as intent on finding the kid as he was, although, Derek was sure, for another reason entirely.

“Are you going to kill Stiles if you find him?” he had asked Chris, a short while after shielding the man from the blast that had ripped the Sheriff’s office apart.

“It depends if Stiles is still Stiles,” Chris had said, a little too determinedly.

Derek hadn’t said anything when he received the call from Deaton. Chris seemed to accept Derek’s weak lie, head tilted with suspicion before nodding, probably only because Derek had just saved his life but he had hoped that there was still some part of him that wanted to give the kid a chance at surviving. To give him enough time to be saved.

Derek had rushed to Deaton’s, ignoring the shards of glass still embedded through his jacket, stumbling in through the door to find Deaton attending to a still healing Scott.

“What happened?” he barks as Scott’s wound, through and through, slowly knits together. A bloody sword still lays where it had been dropped. Kira, nursing a head wound and the tell-tale signs of a blackening eye with an ice pack, waves weakly and nods to the dropped sword. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out _how_ Scott was injured. The fact that it’s only now that he is starting to heal indicates how long the weapon had been left in there. He looks around, eyes darting everywhere, searching for the culprit. “Where’s Stiles?”

“I injected him with Letharia vulpine,” Deaton says, inspecting Scott’s wound, first at the front and then at the back. He steps back, satisfied it is healing and nods at Scott.

“Wolf Lichen” Derek breathes out, remembering his mother mention the name before.

“Yes,” Deaton says, turning to Kira and helping her to one of the available stools. She wavers on her feet but offers them a reassuring smile. “Enough to subdue the fox.”

“Can we use it to kill it?” Scott asks hopefully, pulling his bloodied top back into place. “Will it save Stiles?”

“I don’t know,” Deaton admits with the same calm and blank stare he always wore. He always looked so damn impartial, Derek never knew if the man was pleased or annoyed at any given situation. “I’m not sure how much I can give without it affecting Stiles too. There’s a risk that it can kill him too.”

“Why the hell did you give it to him then?” Scott snaps angrily. He rubs his hand tiredly down his face.

“You’d be dead if I hadn’t,” he points out, picking the sword up and placing it on the table.

“I’m not going to let you kill him,” Scott shakes his head vigorously and Derek realises this is the first time that Scott has spoken to the older man like this, challenging his authority - his boss, a surrogate father, an advisory – but Deaton doesn’t even raise an eyebrow. “I trust you, Deaton. I really do but I can’t accept that.”

“It’s given us some time. Time to regroup. Time to think.”

“About what?” Scott yells suddenly, kicking the table behind him with more force than necessary, the utensils and metal frame shaking violently. “How the hell am I supposed to save him?”

“Us,” Kira corrects quietly from the sidelines. “It’s not all on you.”

Scott snorts, eyes rolling, filling with frustrated tears. He stubbornly doesn’t let any of them fall. “This is my responsibility. I’m the alpha. I let him do that damn ritual,” his voice cracks with the pressure. “He’s my best friend.”

“Scott,” Derek says, stepping forward, firmly planting his hand over the younger boys shoulder. “Kira’s right. This isn’t all on you. That kid has saved my ass on more than once occasion.” He squeezes to emphasise his point. “I didn’t come back just because you asked me to. Stiles is my responsibility too. That’s how packs work.”

Scott nods weakly, looking around, seemingly lost at what to do. His eyes finally settle on Kira, concern flashing when he sees her face. He goes to her immediately, crushing her into a hug, ignoring both Derek’s and Deaton’s disapproving frowns as he tries to siphon some of her pain.

“Just a little,” Scott reassures Kira when she starts to protest with a muffled _‘isn’t this how you got into this mess in the first place’_.

With Scott distracted, Derek pulls Deaton to the side to find out what had _really_ happened.

“Where is he?” Derek asks once the other man has finished.

“I locked him inside the other room,” Deaton tells him, nodding towards one of the back rooms. “I don’t know how long the Nogitsune will be buried for. I didn’t want to take any chances”

“Let me see him,” Derek instructs him, favoring anger over manners. If it was Stiles they were dealing with right now, and not the nogitsune, then the kid must be petrified.

“He’s a little out of it right now,” Deaton tells him but unlocks the door anyway.

Derek shoves the older man aside and strides into the room. It’s not as big as the room he’d just been in – not enough for hiding places anyway, so instantly Derek knows that Stiles _isn’t_ here.

There’s a counter top that runs along three of the four walls around the room. Derek can tell that Stiles has moved some of the items on the counter to the side, wise enough to know that if he had clambered up there with the bottles and boxes still in place, he was sure to knock them off, the sound of breaking glass and utensils drawing unwanted attention.

Above the counter across one side of the room there was a strip of high facing rectangle windows. The furthest one to the right is pushed open, the size of the gap a testament to how much weight Stiles has lost since before he had ritually sacrificed himself.

He gulps as he takes another step further into the room.

There’s an examination table in the centre.

Across the middle of the table, over the shiny metal, is one solitary message, written in Scott’s blood, when it had been still wet on Stiles fingers.

 

_Sorry_

 

“Guys,” Derek calls out loudly. “We have a problem.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

It’s absurd at how Stiles keeps _disappearing_ or someone alerts the others to him being _missing_.

It’s a game that the trickster loves to play. A typical cat and mouse chase. Although who’s who is anyone’s guess. This time, though, Derek is sure that it’s all Stiles doing. Deaton points out that a jar of mountain ash is missing.

Stiles doesn’t _want_ to be found.

“It’s imperative that we find him,” Deaton tells him. “The fox might be subdued but Stiles could still have some unpleasant side effects from the lichen. Without medical attention he could easily succumb to the poison.”

Scott looks wretched when he realises what Stiles has done and tries to leave to try and find him again.

“No,” Derek immediately takes over, pushing the younger boy towards Kira. “Take Kira to hospital. She needs to be checked out. I’ll go.”

“What if he needs medical attention right away,” Scott shakes his head, hand going for his phone. “I need to call my mom.”

“No,” Derek says, pulling the phone away and handing it to Kira. “We don’t know what we’ll find. There’s no need to put more people in harm’s way then necessary. Deaton will be with me. Take Kira to the hospital.”

“But…” Scott says, glancing between Kira and to where Deaton is piling items into his bag, eyes conflicted.

“Scott,” Derek sighs. He must sound weary because it draws Scott’s attention to him. “Do you remember what you said on the roof of the hospital? About what Stiles was trying to do when we couldn’t find him the first time?”

Scott frowns but nods all the same.

“He was protecting us.”

“And he still is,” Derek says with a nod. “This is Stiles we are dealing with right now. Not the nogitsune. He’s scared and he’s running. He thinks he’s saving everyone by leaving, only this time I don’t think he stuck around Beacon Hills. Knowing Stiles, he’s probably gone somewhere we wouldn’t think of looking at.”

“Then how are we going to find him?” Kira asks nervously, hand clenching the phone tightly as though it might vibrate right out of her hand.

Scott’s frown slowly falls away from his face and his darkened eyes suddenly brighten.

“Lydia,” he breathes.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“I don’t know.”

Deaton and Derek are staring at her across the table with a look of hope. At least she thinks they are. Both man were not the easiest to read, even on a good day.

They’ve been there for nearly an hour and nothing is helping.

“Just try again,” Derek insists.

It reminds her of Stiles – from holding a bunch of keys to drawing the biggest clue in her life (although no one had realised it at the time) – but this time she just ends up staring down at an empty page instead.

From behind her she hears Aidan sigh disapprovingly in the direction of the two men sitting before her.

“You’re not helping,” she snips at him.

“Why are you even helping them?” he asks.

“Aidan!” she snaps.

“I’m just pointing out the obvious here,” Aidan says, sliding into the seat beside her, an air of belligerence to his frame that was in contrast to his usual indifference. “Why do you _want_ to go after the Nogitsune?”

“Because it’s Stiles, right? Right now it’s Stiles?” Lydia answers, directing it across the table.

“For now,” Deaton answers with a nod.

“But for how long?” Aidan asks.

“You’re still not helping!” Lydia glowers at Aidan.

“No,” Aidan says quietly, shaking his head. “You know what isn’t helping? You breaking into a cold sweat because Derek and the _veterinarian_ fucked up. You hurting yourself over a lost cause. It’s a _Nogitsune,_ Lydia. You don’t survive that.”

Lydia scoffs at Aidan’s concern –

_(she thinks she hears muffled crying. She turns and looks around but there’s nothing there. It’s gone when she turns to look at Aidan again)_

-  she knows it’s only because she told him she wanted to be with one of the good guys –

_(there’s muffled words against her ears. It’s not Stiles though but it’s still familiar. She frowns because Aidan is still talking. She can see his lips moving but she can’t make out his words or the words that were still in her ears)_

-  she doesn’t know why she keeps being drawn to him. Not after he helped kill Boyd. He –

_(muffled noises remain in her ears, clouding her concentration. Distracting her further)_

“Shut up!” she snaps loudly. So loudly that everything does. Aidan’s lips stop moving, the muffled whisper fades away and noise rushes in – Aidan’s soft breathing next to her, Deaton’s fingers tapping gently over the mahogany table, the clock ticking on the wall to her left. Only Derek remains stoically silent, so she focuses on him instead.

“Lydia?” Derek says quietly when he sees her focus on him. “Deaton told me about you being Stiles tether during the ice tub ritual.”

Lydia nods numbly and continues to stare, biting her lip nervously.

“You’re our best chance at finding him,” Derek continues.

“I heard it, you know…” she whispers quietly.

“Heard what?” Derek asks, confused.

“The MRI,” she says, shaking her head at her then stupidity. She should have known. She should have realised sooner. She’d had one after her own attack and fugue state. It had been so loud she had thought she would suffocate on her own terror. “I had been hearing this noise all day. Clanging? Like metal on metal. It got worse as the night wore on. I think I heard _it_ when it actually happened.”

“Shall we try again?” Deaton nods at her patiently.

Her eyes are drawn down to the road map folded beneath Derek’s curled hand.

“Give me that,” she snaps at him, snatching it from his grasp.

“What are you trying to do?” Aidan asks her.

“Something new,” she tells them. It’s something that she knows Stiles would have asked her to do. She doesn’t even know why she hasn’t tried it before.

Lydia unfolds the paper and lays it across the table, standing over it. She closes her eyes, letting her hand hover over it. With a deep concentration, only Stiles on her mind, she lets her hand drift down towards the paper. As soon as her finger makes contact the words from before are back in her ear. Clear and concise and so very loud.

“There,” she gasps, hand trembling on the map. “He’s there.”

“What the hell is there?” Aidan asks, leaning forward to where her finger lay.

“The Glen Capri,” Lydia breathes out.

 

_‘There’s no hope’_

 

* * *

 

 

 

Lydia had, naturally, wanted to come, just like Scott.

Aidan had refused and Derek had agreed with him, much to the younger wolf’s surprise.

He couldn’t risk anything, even if the poison was keeping the fox at bay.

They also didn’t know what they would find once they got to their destination. Derek could only fathom one reason why Stiles would willingly return to the motel and that knowledge sat heavily in his stomach, churning ugly with every intercepting thought.

“You know about this place, right?” Derek asks Deaton once they are on their way again.

“I heard what happened,” Deaton nods.

“What the hell was he thinking?” Derek hisses, thumping the steering wheel angrily.

“He thinks he’s saving everyone,” Deaton reminds him.

“Like this?” Derek seethes. The scenery flashes past them. He knows he’s driving too fast but he wants to get Stiles as soon as he can. Before the kid does something irreparable. They passed the boundary of Beacon Hills a while ago so he knows if he gets pulled over by the cops he won’t have the Sheriff’s inside knowledge to help. “This isn’t helping.”

He glances over at Deaton as the other man rummages through his bag, spotting a couple of vials full of a brightly colored yellow liquid.

“Is that wise?” Derek asks. “We don’t know what the hell it’s already doing to Stiles.”

“It’s good to be cautious. I’ll assess the situation when we get there,” Deaton says with a shrug, pushing the vials deeper into the bag, out of sight. “But if the situation requires another dose I’ll have no choice but to administer one.”

“I swear to god,” Derek growls, hands curling tightly around the steering wheel. “If anything happens to that kid because of what you gave him I will personally rip your throat out.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

They spot Stiles abandoned jeep at the Glen Capri before they even roll to a stop.

Derek makes an educated guess where Stiles motel room is due to where he’s left the jeep. If it’s not the right room then he’s fully prepared to kick in every door until he finds him.

He kicks the first door open and barrels into the room before Deaton can protest _._

Stiles has, thankfully, made this part easy for him. He’s collapsed on the floor, halfway between the bed and bathroom, as though he was caught unaware. He was still conscious at some point because he’d had the forethought to put a circle of ash around him, the bottle discarded by his lax fingers. His body is twisted, as though he had barely any energy to lift himself, and the circle is messy but good enough to prevent Derek from reaching him.

He wrinkles his nose in disgust as an acrid smell hits his senses. As he takes a step further he sees a pile of vomit by the side of Stiles face.

“Here,” Deaton says, stepping past him to break the circle with his foot before disappearing into the bathroom.

Derek falls to his knees by the side of the unconscious boy and untwists his legs. He pulls at him, turning Stiles away from the vomit. Stiles head lolls listlessly against him, arms slack in his hold. Derek slides in behind him, letting Stiles fall back.

“Stiles?” Derek says over him. He taps his hand across the side of his face that currently doesn’t have vomit smeared across the bottom of his cheek. “Hey, c’mon. Wake up.”

Stiles doesn’t respond as his head lolls against each tap. Derek can feel the intense heat radiating off the trembling body. In fact, Stiles is shivering _violently._

“Use this to clean him up,” Deaton says, re-appearing with a towel that had been soaked through and wrung out. “Try and cool him down.”

Derek takes the towel off him and wipes the side of Stiles face, swiping the contents off the bottom of his jaw. He folds it on itself, concealing the contents, so that the fresh side was now in his hands and wipes it over the teen’s forehead.

Stiles stirs beneath it, eyes blinking open and closed sluggishly, and Derek goes with it, tapping the side of the kid’s face again. “Hey, you with me? C’mon Stiles. Open your eyes for me.”

Stiles eyes open slowly. They look around sluggishly, crinkling in confusion, before settling on Derek’s face above him, glazed and unfocused.

“No, don’t do that…” Derek starts to tap Stiles face again when his eyes slide shut.

“Leave him,” Deaton says, kneeling beside Stiles and feeling for a pulse. “He needs the rest.”

Derek can’t disagree with that. The darkening circles around his eyes are only worsening. It’s any wonder when he had actually last slept.

“How’s he doing?” Derek asks, nodding down to where Deaton has his fingers pressed against Stiles wrist.

“He’s breathing,” Deaton says, releasing the boy’s wrist. It falls boneless into his lap. “So he’s alive.”

“Deaton,” Derek warns.

“I’m serious,” Deaton says. He gestures down to the now out-cold Stiles. “Right now this is our best scenario. At least until we know what our next step is.”

Derek watches as Deaton brushes his hand across the boy’s forehead. Stiles moans with it but doesn’t stir any further.

“And?” Derek prompts

“His pulse is thready. His breathing labored. His temperature is elevated,” Deaton says, rocking back on his haunches. “I’d say he’s fighting a pretty big infection.”

“From the poison or from the nogitsune?”

“I’d hazard a guess and say both,” Deaton says, shaking his head. “We need to get him back to Beacon Hills. I’m loathe to admit it but I think the further away we are the worse the situation will be. Especially here. The nogitsune will love this place. ”

Derek doesn’t waste any more time and scoops Stiles up into his arms, heading straight for the motel room door. Deaton scoops his bag up and rushes after him.

“Wait!” he says, blocking them from leaving.

“You just said we need to go back,” Derek hisses at him. “Get the fuck out of the way.”

“We don’t know if we were followed. We’re not the only ones tracking Stiles,” Deaton says. He tweaks the curtains of the window off to the side and glances out. “Let me go first. The last thing we need to be doing is fending off a bunch of Oni.”

Derek watches as Deaton inches himself out of the motel room. No masked-ninja’s with swords fell the man, So Derek follows after, eyes sweeping the parking lot. Stiles remains resolutely unresponsive in his arms.

Deaton drives back, at a little less speed then their outward journey, allowing Derek sit in the back with Stiles. They’re a little over half way back when Stiles stirs again.

“Hey there,” Derek greets him when he sees Stiles peeping at him through half-lidded lashes.

“D’rek?” Stiles slurs his name.

“What the hell were you thinking?” he murmurs at him. “You’re an idiotic kid.”

“S’rry,” Stiles mumbles, lips moving lazily. His voice sounds cracked and unused. “Should ‘ave left me.”

“Cora will smack you upside of the head if she hears you say that,” Derek tells him. His voice doesn’t have the punch to it that he deserves. **_I’ll_** _hit you upside of the head, you stupid little shit. How is **this** going to help? How is you being **dead** better?_

Stiles blinks, trying to look around, barely being able to lift his head before giving up on the notion.

“She here?” he asks, surprised.

“No,” Derek says. He wonders if he should lie, tell Stiles that she’s back in Beacon Hills, helping Scott. He dismisses the thought, knowing Stiles would balk at the need to protect him, but he hates the idea of laying that type of guilt on him, whether it was deserved or not. “She left, Stiles. I think it got a little bit too much for her.”

Stiles eyes widen in alarm, before glistening with tears. He curls into himself, into Derek’s ribcage. Whether he intended to fold into Derek, he wasn’t sure, but there he was, a trembling mess sprawled over Derek’s lap.

“S’rry,” Stiles mumbles again, voice muffled between Derek’s jacket and soiled shirt.

“I don’t think she would have left if she had realised what we were truly dealing with,” Derek attempts to reassure him, patting his shoulder awkwardly.

“Still sorry,” Stiles huffs out.

Derek feels Stiles twist the edge of his shirt between his fingers, each twist tightening the closer they got to the town sign that would ultimately say _‘Welcome to Beacon Hills’._ Somewhere between that ominous sign and the McCall’s residence Stiles hand slackens and he’s out once again.

 

* * *

 

 

_tbc_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Throughout 3b I always figured Stiles would go back to that place at least once during his multiple disappearing acts. I seriously thought that the standalone episode from 3a was some foreshadowing for the Stiles arc in 3b. When it clearly wasn't going to happen I thought the only natrual way to rectify this was to incorporate it here, and seriously a coyote den IN Beacon Hills? Nope, my Stiles goes a little further afar to the one place he might not actually return from.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait but as I said, updates are sporadic at best. 
> 
> So this covers an au-version of de-void through to divine move, but I have tweaked it to my version, making it completely canon-divergent (really, I just wanted an excuse to move locations and some other stuff which I won't discuss here in case it spoils it for you.)
> 
> Some trigger warnings: 
> 
> The Noggi! speaks about Stiles in a sexual manner that can be considered suggestive. Most of it it is just to try and get under the others skin. He also implies that he would put Stiles in a situation where he had no say over consent. 
> 
> There's also some references to the massacre at the hospital, which Stiles and the others eventually go to, so the imagery there might be considered a little bit triggery.
> 
> Again, Stiles has some fleeting thoughts of dying/killing himself although this is in line with what we have seen in The Divine Move, especially when he thinks it will save everyone else. In this version though, although it's not what the Nogitsune originally planned, Stiles does something that could potentially be very fatal for him.

Chapter 7

 

They take Stiles back to Scott’s, where he was waiting with Lydia, Aidan and Melissa, and leave him out for the count on the McCall’s couch, head tipped back, arms lax by his side.

Deaton isn’t completely satisfied and insists that they keep him as immobile as possible. Derek watches the vet with hard and suspicious eyes as he pipettes a few drops of the kanima’s paralyzing agent into the teen’s mouth.

Of course, that’s when he comes to with a start, choking on the liquid and spluttering for breath. Scott immediately steps forward to offer comfort, but it’s Derek who reaches out, snagging him by his arm and pulling him out of reach. The boy that had awakened was not Stiles. The eyes were different. A smirk plays at the corner of his lips, leaving an amused smear.

Derek tenses beside Scott. He doesn’t like this look on Stiles or the scent that accompanied it. It was sour and dark, masking Stiles usual rich and warm and excitable one. It was still there though, jaded and fading and served as a reminder that _their_ Stiles was still there, probably desperately trying to hold on, screaming to be heard.

“Really, Deaton?” Stiles chuckles. “Kanima juice? You walk around with this stuff? Keeping it for the special occasions, huh?”

Stiles head lolls over the back of the sofa as he laughed. The sound slips so easily out of him, so naturally, that Derek had to remind himself that it _wasn’t_ Stiles usual laugh. Stiles laugh was loud and exuberant, obnoxious and endearing. It wasn’t what he was hearing now. Small giggles that rolled off the tongue as he sat there languidly.

“Do you like it?” Stiles suddenly asks. He wiggles on the sofa – at least he tries to, the venom was setting to work on the boy’s limbs, but Derek still catches the squirm of his bottom. “Do you like restraining teenage boys, Deaton? Do you get a kick out of it? Do you _watch_ Stiles and want to do things to him?”

Scott growls angrily, pulling his arm free before taking a threatening steps forward.

“Tut, tut Scott,” Stiles clucks in an amused manner. “You don’t want to hurt us. Stiles is right here. Screaming and crying and stamping his little feet.”

“Just stop talking like that,” Scott warns, clenching his hands into clawed fits uselessly.

“Why?” he asks, seemingly genuinely bemused. “It’s fun.”

He locks his gaze on Derek and smiles, licking his lips suggestively.

“What about you, Derek?” Stiles purrs up at him. “Do you like what you see?”

Derek refuses to rise to the bait and stares down in a hardened glare.

“Did you know Stiles is having some kind of existential bi crisis?” he asks. He grins slightly, a smug look on his face.

“Will you stop,” Lydia hisses furiously. “I don’t get what this has to with the grand schemes of things. Just leave him alone.”

“Chaos, strife, pain. It’s kind of my thing…” he says, rolling his eyes. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. I’ll get to you later.”

Aidan growls protectively, tugging Lydia back into his side.

Stiles snorts at the gesture and rolls his head back into place, glancing between Scott and Derek. “Stiles brain misfires so much, so many thoughts…” he closes his eyes briefly, breathing in as though he was savouring each and every one. “It’s like a party in here, but seriously, I don’t think he’s even equated popping a boner whenever he looks at some guys butt.”

“I told you to stop talking about him like that,” Scott warns again.

He makes Stiles smile, mouth splitting wide in a gleeful manner, obviously ecstatic at this reaction. “I’m sure there will be loads of guys at Jungle who’d like a piece of an underage boy, especially this one. Stiles would make a pretty good slut, don’t you think?” He licks his lips again, and pouts at them. The gesture would seem ridiculous on Stiles features if Derek wasn’t convinced that the nogitsune would follow through on his threat. “Sometimes I don’t even know how I can stop myself from touching him.”

“I SAID STOP!” Scott yells, rushing forward, eyes bleeding red. Melissa is already there before Derek can react, filtering the alpha’s rage-filled haze with her curly haired profile. Scott lets his mom pull him away into the back of the room.

“Take it easy,” Melissa murmurs quietly. “Remember that Stiles is still in there. You can’t touch him.”

“But you want to,” Stiles sing-songs from the couch, waggling his eyebrows at them. He settles his eyes on Lydia and smirks. “How about when this is all over, and it’s just you and me, I keep some of the kanima juice just for you.”

“I don’t think so, _sweetheart_...” she mimics with disgust.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he says, refusing to lose the shit eating grin he was wearing. “I think you’d make a good BDSM bitch.”

Aidan’s the one to lose it. He’s on Stiles in an instant, hands clamping over an exposed throat. Stiles gasps and chokes, an automatic, and _human_ reaction to the sudden lack of oxygen but starts chuckling again as soon as Derek and Scott wrestle the enraged wolf away.

“You know how they say that twins get a feeling when the other one's in pain?” Stiles says, voice a little throaty. “You didn't lose that talent, too, did you? Oh, I hope not.”

Aidan stiffens between their hold.

“You're going to need it,” he taunts. “Okay, I'll give a little hint,” Stiles says, stretching his head and neck forward, voice hushed. “Ethan's at the school.”

Stiles rolls his head as he watches him leave, more chuckles and small giggles airily lifting up from him, tainting the air around them.

“Oh, I hope he gets there in time. I like the twins. Short tempers. Homicidal compulsions,” his lazy grin turns into a sneer as he nods at the rest of the occupants of the room. “They're a lot more fun than you bakemono trying to save the world every day.”

“Doc, you brought something to paralyze his body,” Melissa says. “You got anything for his mouth?”

“Yes, I do…” Deaton says, ripping a strip of tape away from the roll and duct-taping Stiles mouth shut.

The thing wearing Stiles like a meat suit roars, but Derek knows better, and sure enough the roar fades away to muffled giggles and amused eyes.

 

* * *

 

 

“I think we're grossly underestimating the danger here,” Deaton is saying.

Derek and Lydia sit side by side as Scott paces around the table they’re all sat at. Derek’s eyes drift from the young alpha’s pacing, to Deaton who only seems to remind everyone how dangerous Stiles still is, and Melissa who drifts uselessly from the table, always coming to a stop halfway between them and the occupant of the couch. Derek senses her worry, concern for Scott and Lydia, worry that Stiles might keel over and succumb to the kanima venom or the obvious draining hold the nogitsune has over him.

“He might be paralyzed, but it still feels like he's got us right in the palm of his hand,” Deaton continues.

Lydia sits stiffly beside him, body riddled with anxiety and mixing with the overpowering sour scent that drifts over from the couch. She reflexively splays her hand out, hands pushing into the table, before curling into two small fists. She stands suddenly from the table and gestures for Scott to follow and they both disappear for a few minutes.

Derek turns sharply when he hears sniffles but before he can react Melissa has the tape off and is offering comfort to her surrogate son.

“Really, Melissa? I shed one tear? That's all it takes?” Stiles asks, shaking his head in disapproval. “C’mon. You can't crumble that easily.”

Derek hears everything Stiles says. He doesn’t understand it. Melissa does by the look on her face. “This isn’t you,” she mutters darkly.

“It is now,” Stiles tells her back.

 

 

* * *

 

 

For some reason it’s Peter they call.

Scott’s unsure and thinks it’s unsafe.

Derek translates that to ‘untrustworthy’.

When Lydia explains her theory Derek has to reluctantly agree.

“He doesn't look like he would survive a slap across the face,” Peter says, after circling the couch.

“Wanna give it a try?” Stiles asks with a goading smile.

Peter smirks down at the boy and grabs Stiles chin, pinning him there.

“This is more a war of the mind than the body,” Peter says, speaking more to Stiles than anyone else in the room.

“Peter?” Scott asks, uncertainly.

“We're going to get into his head,” Peter says, releasing his hold.

Stiles head drops back. It bounces off the back off the couch and causes Stiles to grunt in discomfort.

“Hey,” Stiles huffs out. “Watch the merchandise.”

“Scott is going to try and dig through pale and sickly Evil Stiles mind to unearth pale and sickly Real Stiles,” Peter says, ignoring the boy’s discomfort. He steps away and levels a gaze at Scott. “Then guide him back from the depths of his own subconscious.”

Stiles twitches on the couch. Derek knows he’s nervous which could only mean that Peter is doing something right much to his own weariness over his uncle’s involvement. Scott was right, Peter was untrustworthy, and he couldn’t quite believe that he’d actively help them without some ulterior motive, but he couldn’t deny that this was the best plan they had going for them. If not the only one.

He glances at Lydia, wondering how she had convinced Peter to help, and what her involvement was. She looks guilty for all of a few seconds then turns and glares at Peter.

“But he's not going to do it alone.”

“I’m not?” Scott asks nervously, looking around, eyes settling on Derek for confirmation.

He’s right, Derek firmly thinks, already deciding it for him.

Peter, though has other ideas, and stares at Lydia.

Stiles rolls his head too, looking up and over the back of the couch towards the red-head and laughs.

Derek isn’t sure if this _is_ a good idea after all.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Stiles is cold and tired.

Time shifts slowly like it’s molasses.

He doesn’t even know how he ended up playing Go but there he is, playing a game that’s not his, shifting pieces around and not really knowing what he’s doing.

He knows he’s losing.

The nogitsune sits across from him. They’re both cross-legged, the Go board sitting between them. It’s only now that he realises they’re sat on the nemeton stump. His gaze drifts between the Nogitsune’s bandages, sharp teeth and blackened mouth and the board pieces strategically placed around the board.

He’s vaguely aware of a faint noise, drifting in and coiling around him. It plays at his senses but never quite reaches the part of his brain that recognises it. It slowly fades away and disappears altogether and Stiles resumes his playing, hands moving slowly across the small pieces and pushing them into place, another step towards a losing game.

But that’s when it happens.

The board shakes violently underneath the tips of his fingers and suddenly time stops moving so slowly. Sound rushes in loudly and Stiles looks up, immediately spotting Scott and Lydia in the distance.

He’s not in molasses anymore and Stiles knows what he wants. What he _will_ get.

He wants to go to Scott and Lydia.

He wants to go home.

Back to pack.

Back to his dad.

He fixes the nogitsune with a glare of defiance, and flips the board with a wide swung swipe, the contents of the board go flying. He screams at the Nogitsune and the Nogitsune screams back.

And-

 

 

* * *

 

 

… He’s not staring across the Nemeton at the Nogistune anymore.

He’s crawling across a floor, clothes heavy and dragging him back down. He gags and tries to scream because something covers his mouth and his eyes and his ears. He’s smothered in stench, material damp and tacky and moist with an uncomfortable warmth against his skin that sits heavily over the coldness that was already there.

He manages to lurch unsteadily to his feet, dizzyingly stumbling one way or another.

A muffled scream or gasp makes its way through the cloggy material and then hands are on him and he’s being thrown back down onto the floor.

Stiles cries out in pain and fear and fights the hands that are angrily holding him down.

The Nogitsune still has him.

He’s taken him somewhere worse.

 _“Wait,”_ something murmurs above him

The pressure holding him down disappears and Stiles uses the opportunity to try and break free from the restricting material over his face, weakly ripping and peeling the sticky bandages away.

He was still trapped

He was still being stifled

He was positively sure he was being asphyxiated.

The hands were back, hesitant at first and then more determined, helping to rip away the restricting material.

Scott’s face looms above him. Weary at first. Confused second. He glances down at him and then above him towards a warm presence on his other side.

“Scott?” Stiles breathes out, disorientated and weak. He wants Scott to reach out and touch him, to know that it’s him and not anyone else.  He glances away, towards Derek, when he realises Scott is hesitant to believe it, desperate for someone to touch him, to anchor him and remind himself that it was real. That he was, in fact, sitting on the floor in the middle of Melissa’s living room and not sitting on a tree stump somewhere.

“Scott?” Deaton says from where he’s still standing with Melissa.

Scott tears his eyes away and looks at where Deaton is pointing.

Stiles startles as Scott jumps up violently. He flinches and unexpectedly sags sideways, Derek immediately catching him and letting him rest against his side.

Scott’s yelling, the anger reverberating through the room, and Stiles sucks in a shuddering breath. He closes his eyes tight and tries to suck his distress back down with his shudders.

The Nogitsune is there. Stiles can feel and hear it still screaming in his face.

When he opens his eyes it’s not the Nogitsune that’s staring into his face, but Derek, and he sags in relief.

Scott’s gone and the door is wide open, the faint sound of his friend’s scream of “Lydia,” ripping through the air.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Derek knows he should be helping to find Lydia but he can’t bring himself to leave Stiles side.

Deaton and Scott left, looking for her, and Peter skulked off somewhere looking faintly concerned. That left Melissa who, right now, looks terrified of the boy in front of her.

Instead Derek settles in beside Stiles on the floor and offers a warm hand that he rubs up and down the kid’s back in what he hopes is a warm and comforting touch.

Stiles shivers violently against him, face half-buried into Derek’s shoulder, as he watches Melissa with half-lidded eyes.

“Sorry,” he offers tiredly.

This seems to shake Melissa even more and she nods down towards them where they still sat.

“Take him up to Scott’s room, Derek…” she says, already halfway to the stairs. “I need to check him over and get some fluids into him.”

Derek more than drags Stiles up the stairs, Stiles feet hardly gracing the floor with his attempt to stumble his way there.

Derek watches as Melissa, hesitant in her ministrations, gives Stiles a cursory once over.

“Am I really me?” Stiles asks in a small voice.

He looks even smaller on Scott’s bed. Derek is still worried by the pallor of his skin and the dark circles around his eyes. He isn’t naive. He knows Stiles isn’t going to miraculously look and feel better – Stiles hasn’t slept in weeks, he’s probably malnourished and dehydrated – but something tells him that since he and the nogitsune managed to split, Stiles actually looks _worse._

“Real enough,” Derek offers what he can.

Stiles sighs tiredly and weakly accepts the Gatorade juice Melissa offers him.

“I left a message for your dad,” Derek tells him.

Stiles flinches on the bed, a panicked look fluttering across his face.

“I told him you’re safe. Don’t worry,” Derek reassures him, knowing how Stiles worries about his dad worrying over him. He frowns down at his phone as a message from Scott comes in.

“Is that my dad?” Stiles asks, worrying his lip.

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “Scott’s on his way back. Allison called him. He needs me to go and check on Aidan and Ethan.”

“You should go,” Stiles nods and tries to wave him away. “I think they might actually be in trouble.” He frowns slightly as though he was trying to remember something. “Isaac too.”

Derek hesitates, not wanting to leave or burden Melissa any further when she was clearly still trying to decipher if Stiles was a danger or not.

“Go,” Melissa says, reaching out to Stiles hand with her own and squeezing when he settles a pained look at her. “We’ll be fine.”

Derek reluctantly agrees and nods.

“Can you text Scott?” Stiles asks. He has a determined look on his face. A stubborn one. One that Derek knows well. “There’s someone I need him to call.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Is she here?” Stiles asks when Scott arrives.

Scott helps him from the bed and exchanges a look of worry with his mom.

“Guys,” Stiles tries to reassure them. “I need to do this.”

Scott and Melissa help him back down to the living room where Kira’s mom is waiting for him. He nods at Scott who lets him take the few faltering steps between them.

He lets her call the Oni, ignoring the palpable distress from the others, Kira included.

He needed this.

He had to know.

Even if it meant being stabbed by swords.

It’s not like he didn’t deserve it.

The Oni appear in a swirl of black inkiness.

He’s grabbed by one, gloved hand pinching tightly against the back of his neck. Stiles doesn’t develop Jason Bourne reflexes and no Oni’s explode into a shower of light.

Instead, as soon as they release him, he drops heavily to the floor, shaking and convulsing and not dead.

The cold sinks into his bones, worsening the chill that was already there, and never really leaves.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Stiles follows Scott around weakly, ignoring his orders to “sleep” and “rest”, and fights the urge to collapse back onto the couch where he’d woken with a racing heart and a terror that threatened to leave him a quivering mess.

He stubbornly refuses to stay home when they hear that Meredith, the _other_ banshee, was at the school and looking for Scott.

He ends up balking when he spots Coach, sans arrow in his chest, and shamelessly hides while Scott smuggles Meredith out when it’s clear that Coach and Brunski are in the middle of a posturing contest.

They pick Isaac up on the way.

“You look like you’re dying,” Isaac says a little too loudly from the back.

“Isaac!” Scott yells, horrified and angry.

“Thanks,” Stiles mutters from the passenger seat.

“What?” Isaac asks, affronted. “He does. When we find the other you is he going to look like he’s getting better?”

“I’d know if you were,” Meredith offers from where she’s sat beside Isaac. She reaches over the seat and pats his shoulder.

Stiles pulls away from the touch and stares out of the window.

He wasn’t sure he deserved to live.

“You’re not going to die,” Scott tells him firmly as though he could hear the dark thoughts plaguing him.

“Your friend doesn’t want to be found,” Meredith sighs loudly.

“You can hear that?” Scott asks.

“It’s pretty loud.”

Stiles tunes them out, their voices muffled in his ear. He doesn’t care what Scott says, he’d readily put himself on the end of an Oni sword if it meant keeping Lydia safe. He’d willingly die if it means keeping everyone else alive.

Scott and Meredith have a weird exchange where Meredith uses Scott’s phone to commune with the supernatural and then mutters something in another language. It could be Spanish for all he knows.

Scott says it’s French and it seems to clue him on a location and they end up at the old internment camp.

He can’t shake off the feeling of dread that engulfs him.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The split up – Allison, Kira and Isaac going up against a small army of Oni – while he trails after Scott in their search for Lydia.

 

 

* * *

 

 

They find Lydia tear-stained and angry behind a metal gate.

“Who else is here?” she cries in panic. “Who else came with you?”

And Stiles knows know.

He recognises the feeling of dread, feels it on the tip of his tongue, as it rolls off Lydia in waves of terror.

Someone else is going to die.

Someone else is going to die because of _him_.

 

 

* * *

 

 

He collapses on the way back through the tunnel, Scott’s racing ahead, unable to stop, heading to inevitable tragedy.

Lydia stumbles beside him, trying to keep him upright.

As the darkness fall he prays it’s him.

 _Don’t wake up,_ he tells himself, _don’t you dare fucking wake up._

 

 

* * *

 

 

Allison dies

He wakes up to the echo of her name as it shakes through the tunnel. It seems to go on forever.

Lydia’s already hugging him, body shaking and sobbing. Stiles knows she’s not offering comfort – why would she? He’s the reason her best friend is dead, he’s the cause of all this chaos, strife and pain – but he can’t shake the feeling that she’s trying to take what little comfort she can from his cold and lifeless body.

He can offer that, can’t he?

There was still some humanity in him, wasn’t there?

 _‘You’re more you than the Nogitsune’_ Noshiko had told him.

He wraps his arms around Lydia and cries.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Sometime passes and Kira and Noshiko appear and help them out of the tunnel in a stunned daze.

Lydia runs to Isaac who remains staring at Allison’s…

Allison’s body. Her Corpse. She’s lying there, right in the middle of the compound, her body probably still warm to the touch.

“Oh god,” Stiles gags and chokes, stumbling into Noshiko’s side.

“Shh” she says, tugging him away. “Don’t look.”

Scott’s by the wire fence, holding on to it for support, face pressed right into the mesh. Chris Argent is stood behind and speaking in a hushed and tense manner. They both look devastated.

Stiles wants to go to them but Noshiko won’t let him and before he knows it his legs are being folded into a car, a seatbelt fastened over him and someone is curling up against him and sliding their warm hand into his cold one.

 

 

* * *

 

 

He goes to the Yukimara’s and has warm tea pushed into his hands.

Kira disappears for an hour or so and reappears with clean clothes.

A red plaid shirt and dark pants.

Stiles hadn’t realised how devoid of color he had been. It’s a refreshing change to the greyness the Nogitsune had swathed him in. It comforts him even though he knows he doesn’t deserve it.

"Allison's dead. Now I guess the only good thing is it looks like I'm dying, too."

“Hey,” Kira says with a shake of the head. “Don’t talk like that.”

“He’s been playing me,” Stiles mutters angrily. Angry at the nogitsune, angry at himself, angry at the cute girl with a never ending optimism, even in the face of death. “I’m just one of his fucking pawns on his fucking little board-game.”

“What if I don’t have any moves left?” he asks out loud. He didn’t really expect an answer.

“Stiles?” Noshiko asks. She sits down next to him and gathers his hand in hers. He looks up wearily at her. “What do you know about divine moves?”

 

 

* * *

 

 

"Stick with the plan, okay?"

"The plan is to save you. That's the plan I'm going with," Scott says.

They end up covered in snow and cornered by even more Oni while the nogitsune taunts them.

Kira and Scott try their best but they’re soon outnumbered and Stiles finds himself in possession of Kira’s katana.

He’s literally about to consider seppuku when he catches the reflection of something on the edge of the sword. A book. An edge of a desk. An illusion.

“You don’t have any moves left, Stiles…” the Nogitsune taunts.

“I do,” Stiles says, quietly at first and then louder. “A divine move.”

The Nogitsune laughs, spittle flying.

Stiles drops the katana sword to the floor.

“Find someone else to play,” Stiles mutters.

The Nogitsune roars again and everything disappears – the snow, the yakuza garden, the oni – and all that’s left is the four of them.

“Is that it?” Scott asks in disbelief.

“Is it over?” Kira asks wearily, looking around them.

They tentatively step out into the hallway, as if expecting more Oni and a raging Nogitsune.

“Got to say if it then it’s a little anticlimactic,” Stiles glibly offers. “What with all the build-up.”

“No,” Lydia breathes out as she suddenly sways into Stiles.

“Whoa,” Stiles exclaims, struggling to hold both their bodies up. “Hey.”

He gladly offers Lydia’s still swaying body over to Scott and leans onto the nearby lockers to steady himself.

“What is it?” Scott asks urgently, helping to regain her balance.

“I just got a rushing feeling,” she says. “Like something was wrong.”

 _Yeah_ , Stiles mutters to himself, _it was too much to ask for a reprieve._

Scott’s phone rings.

“Hey,” Scott says. “Yeah, we’re okay,” Scott reassures whoever was on the other end of the phone and then pales, glancing at Stiles with a horrified expression. Stiles straightens, already feeling like the floor was falling out from beneath him. “What?” Scott croaks. “But you guys are okay? Good. Good. No stay there. They’ll need your help. We’ll meet you there.”

“What?” Stiles asks and when Scott doesn’t answer straight away he growls again. “What?”

“The hospital,” Scott gulps nervously, fearful. “It was attacked. The station to.”

Stiles freezes, feels everything still around him.

Kira sucks in an audible gasp. Lydia rubs her head and says “That’s what I felt,” to no one in particular.

“My dad?” Stiles asks and then immediately feels bad for not asking about Melissa first.

“He’s fine, apparently…” Scott says, either ignoring or not noticing Stiles total disregard for Scott’s own priorities. “He’s on his way to the hospital now. They attacked my mom but she’s fine,” Scott rushes when he sees his reaction. “She said she stopped bleeding when the Oni disappeared.”

“This is all my fault,” Stiles says darkly.

“It’s not,” Scott says.

Scott grabs Lydia’s arm and helps her out of the school and Kira takes up Lydia’s previous position as Stiles crutch, the two of them filing out after them.

 

 

* * *

 

 

In hindsight, Stiles probably shouldn’t be here.

Partly because his doppelganger was just here, merrily walking with a group of masked ninja’s who had just slaughtered a bunch of people.

Also because he’s well known for his queasiness.

Guilt lays deeply on third base too, suffocating him.

“You don’t need to be here,” Scott says. “Do you want to go?”

“No,” Stiles says as they follow the track of blood through the hallways. They both know there’s nowhere for him to go. Stiles isn’t entirely sure he should _even_ be alone right now.

There’s bodies strewn all over the place. 

There’s a few people huddled together, helping each other. Blood splatters the floor and dots the walls.

“Scott?” Melissa calls from where she’s standing by a gurney. “I need your help.”

Stiles watches numbly as Scott goes and leaches someone’s pain away.

Kira goes to a mother and son who are both crying, the mother’s tears only worsening her son’s, and offers what little comfort she can. Lydia falls to her knees by someone’s feet and rips some of dress away, bundling it up against a wound that was bleeding too fast.

Stiles stares at a spot on a wall where there’s the tell-tale signs of arterial spray. A body lay not too far away.

Sudden movement and gurgling in the corridor to his right startles him and he spins and sees someone staring up at him with wild and fearful eyes.

Stiles shakes and gasps.

The figure clutches at their neck, blood pooling between their fingers. They gurgle some more. Panic because they know they’re dying. Panic because they think that it’s _him._

“Sorry,” Stiles croaks out. He feels tears leak. “I’m sorry.”

Scott’s dad suddenly appears in front of him.

“Hey,” McCall says, grabbing him by the shoulders. “Are you hurt?”

Stiles manages a shake of his head. He can’t tear his eyes away from the dying figure behind McCall’s shoulder.

“Focus on me, okay?” McCall says, shaking him. “Don’t look.”

McCall’s voice blurs into Noshiko’s and suddenly it’s not some random stranger dying and trying to shuffle fearfully away. It’s Allison. Allison with big wide eyes. Allison. Allison. Allison.

“Hey! Breathe, kid. Breathe…” McCall keeps telling him. “Now is not the time to freak out.”

Stiles feels like the floor shift beneath him. Not like before. Not like he was panicking. It was like it was pushing him up. Up. Up. Like he wasn’t even on the first floor.

His body stiffens and his eyes roll upwards and stare at a flickering light. It crackles and sparks but no one seems to notice.

“Stiles?” McCall says, following Stiles gaze. When he sees nothing and Stiles body doesn’t react to his shaking, he turns and yells over his shoulder. “Mel! I don’t know what’s wrong with him!”

He’s _here_.

He’s _up_ _there_.

Melissa finally gets to the person – god, Stiles can’t even tell through all the blood if they were a man or a woman – and tries stem the blood flow.

“Get him out of here, Rafe…” Melissa says.

Stiles flinches at the words

_I’m sorry_

_I didn’t mean to_

_Please please_

A sudden rage fills him, sparking some new renewed energy he was sure was actually being fired up from somewhere else entirely, and he doesn’t even know if it’s a plan or if it will even work but he ends up shaking out of McCall’s grasp and bolting.

“Shit!” he hears McCall shout after him, Lydia’s and Scott’s scream of his name following after, banging off the walls of the stairwell.

He races up the stairs as fast as he can and stumbles his way through the roof door exit, knowing Scott and the others won’t be too far behind.

“A divine move?” the nogitsune says with a scoff. He’s leant against the pillar of a low rise wall, arms folded over his chest. He grins, his demeanour amused. “I’m a thousand years old, Stiles. Do you really think you can kill me?”

“I never said I could kill you,” Stiles says quietly, panting for breath.

The door rebounds off the wall as Scott stumbles through. Lydia, Kira, Melissa and Scott’s dad appear soon after. Derek and Isaac are with them with their box. Stiles watches as the Nogitsune hardens his eyes.

McCall squawks in surprise.

“Oh my god. There’s two of them.”

“Been there. Done that. Got the t-shirt,” The Nogitsune says, gesturing to himself. “Not literally. I would not be seen dead wearing plaid. A little too lumberjack for me.”

The Nogitsune tilts his head and looks over the back of the wall with a little wave.

“Your dad just arrived,” he says as he turns back. “I wonder what it will be like for him to find your dead body up here.”

“Fuck you!” Stiles spits. There’s no way he’s letting this thing drag his dad into this.

“Tell me Stiles,” he asks. “You’re not going to kill me, you’ve used your divine move. What is your next move? Have you _even_ got one?” 

“I thought you were smarter than that,” Stiles says, forcing a grin. He’s surprised the Nogitsune hasn’t picked up on it yet.

“THIS IS MY GAME!” The nogitsune snaps, finally losing his cool, striding forward a few steps. “YOU THINK YOU CAN BEAT ME AT MY GAME!”

Someone snags Stiles by the arm and tries to pull him back.

Derek’s voice hisses in his ear.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“I’ve got this,” Stiles says, pulling away from the hold and stepping back towards the Nogitsune. Well, at least he hopes he does. This idea came to him sometime between standing in a hallway full of blood and barrelling his way up the stairwell. It was based more on faith than logic. He glances at where some freshly cut wires hang loosely, whipping harmlessly out of reach of the two of them. There was a few splattering’s of puddles scattered over the rooftop, one that was just a foot away to Stiles right.

That hadn’t originally been at the forefront of Stiles thoughts but it reminded him of something equally important nonetheless.

Kira’s foxfire had, in effect, electrified Stiles and sparked the Nogitsune into existence. What if the opposite was also true?

“That wasn’t my divine move,” Stiles says.

“It wasn’t?” The Nogitsune asks, amused and intrigued.

“A divine move is an out of the box, _original_ move. Something not used before. Think about it,” Stiles says. He shifts sideways, just a little, not enough to draw attention, enough that some of it sinks into the soles of his sneakers. “I chose not to play in the white room. I flipped the board when I heard Scott. And then again when I refused to play your little _seppuku._ They can’t be divine if they are the _exact_ same move.”

The Nogitsune bristles with anger.

“It wasn’t a divine move,” Stiles says. He closes his hand into a fist and shuts his eyes, picturing Harris’ old bumper sticker behind his eyelids. He says the words silently over and over again _imagination is greater than knowledge imagination is greater than knowledge imagination is greater than knowledge_ and prays that it’s true. He tells himself to believe, to believe that that night meant something, that it was always there for this moment, that Talia and Laura and everyone who was dead where there believing with him too. Everything that happened between then and now had to mean something. “This is,” he says slowly. He opens his hand first and then looks a second later. “Holy shit!” he murmurs quietly, surprising himself when he sees the mountain ash in his hand that had definitely not been there before. “It freakin’ worked!”

He has no idea if it will work and he’s never had any practice at magical mountain ash throwing – he’s always presumed it takes years of practice – but he just hopes that the belief is enough to get a half-decent one. He sucks in a breath and flings his hand up and the Nogistune huffs out angrily when they fall into two – not quite perfect – circles around them.

“Mountain ash? C’mon Stiles,” he sighs. Stiles can hear the frustrated tone. The loose, sparking wires thrash more angrily, much closer to the pool of water to their sides. Once the mountain ash rings had fallen into place, the puddles of water under his feet had also been manipulated, the particles of water moving to surround the two rings of ash. “What are you going to do? Keep me up on the roof forever? You won’t do that. You know why?”

Stiles refuses to answer. He needs the wires just a little bit closer.

“You’re in me, Stiles…” The Nogitsune says, it hisses between them and Stiles can feel the hostility, the stench of it. “I can feel you. I’m in you. We’re the same. I will fucking taint you for the rest of your goddamn life.”

Stiles glances at the puddle again. The wires are there now, sparking at the edge of it.

“Stiles!” Lydia says. “What are you doing?”

“What I have to do.”

“What if it’s just a trick?”

"What if it saves you? What if it saves all of you?"

“Stiles, please don’t. We’ll figure it out,” Scott says.

“This is my move, Scott…” Stiles says. He feels himself smiling. “I’m winning.”

He glances over his shoulder and levels a glare at Derek, “You better revive me, sourwolf.”

“You can’t win,” the Nogitsune says when Stiles turns back to look at him.

“You said ‘we’ and ‘us’ even when you were in my head but we’re not the same,” he says, shaking his head. “We’re not the same because if we were I wouldn’t be able to do this…”

Stiles takes the first step over the mountain ash barrier and hears the wail of a banshee scream even before the voltages hit him.

 

_tbc_


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again so sorry for the delay. RL does not take the need for writing time into consideration.
> 
> So, a little explanation. I always intended to have the situation 'resolved' this way. I think i mentioned on tumblr once that I strongly believed electricity would be a key to 'saving' stiles. I always thought if that's what kick-started it, then it better damn well be the way to save him too. Sadly, it was not the case, but alas we have the power of fic and fandom and head-canon that can resolve any situation anyway we so wish ;D
> 
> Also, I include a quote from Papercut, by Zedd at the start of the chapter. I envisioned that song being played though some of the Stiles CPR scenes. Because I am continuing to whump him and agonize everyone around him. 
> 
> T/W: Again, there's some mentions of 'giving up'/suicidal thoughts but nothing too direct.

_ _

_ Chapter 8 _

_Right now it feels like we're bleeding  
So deep that we might not get back up _(Papercut, by Zedd ft. Troye Sivan)

 

 

“Stiles!” Derek roars when he sees Stiles step out of the ring. It gets drowned out by the shrill scream erupting from Lydia.

There’s nothing that anyone can do but watch as Stiles body stiffens, then seizes, as he falls to the floor. His body convulses in the pooled water full of violent ticks and full body tremors as the electricity feeds into his body.

The Nogitsune, although not seizing, crumples to the ground as soon as the first tentacle of electricity strikes Stiles body. He lays silently in the confines of the mountain ash.

Derek strides forward to the boy, with no concern for himself, as Stiles body shakes violently but was suddenly pulled back. Scott has his hand wrapped around his arm. Face shocked, he turns angry eyes towards him.

“Are you crazy?” Scott snaps at him before turning away to look at Stiles forlornly. “Kira?”

“Already on it,” the young kitsune says before somersaulting over Stiles and landing easily to catch the errant wires in an almost identical way to how she had saved Isaac.

Kira clasps the end of the wires with her hand, eyes glowing bright as she siphons the electricity through her palms. The pulsating, angry lines of electricity recede from Stiles shaking body and reverse back to Kira until they completely disappear. Satisfied with the result Kira discards the now useless wires to the side and nods at the group of people before her.

Melissa is the first to react, stumbling to the ground by the now lax Stiles. Her hands urgently search for a pulse and then she shakes her head in frustration.

“Raph,” she snaps up at McCall. “I need your help. He’s not breathing. Two rescue breaths. I’ll do compressions.”

McCall nods and drops down on the opposite side of the boy, tilting his head back in preparation for the breaths. Derek watches as Stiles chest rises and then falls when the breath was pushed in.

Scott and Lydia immediately go to each other. Lydia cries and buries her face in Scott’s chest, refusing to watch.

“It’s all my fault,” Derek hears her muffled cry. “I shouldn’t have let it out.”

“It’s not your fault,” Scott’s words are slurred by his own grief. “ _Please_ , Stiles. Don’t do this. It can’t happen again. I can’t lose you too.”

Derek sidesteps the still intact rings of mountain-ash and drops to his knees by McCall’s side, ready to offer Melissa respite if she tires from the compressions, remembering Stiles last words to him. Of course, Stiles was prepared for this. He knew what could happen. He was prepared to die to save everyone else. _The stupid, idiotic fool._

He slides his palm over Stiles unresponsive cold and wet hand, curling it over so it’s wrapped tightly into his fist as he watches his body move rhythmically with each compression.

In the distance he can make out thundering footsteps on the stairs, the Sheriff’s harried breathing loud in his ears, as he makes his way to the roof. And Stiles.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Stiles wake up exactly where he was the last time he had been in the white room. The Nemeton.

He blinks sluggishly as he uncurls himself. The whiteness is temporarily blinding and it isn’t until it starts to fade away that he realises someone else is sitting on the opposite side of him, legs folded, arms resting on either side of their body.

Stiles recoils violently.

Only to realise it’s not the Nogitsune wrapped in bandages or even a clone of him. It’s a girl. A woman. Brown hair just past her shoulders. Familiar.

“Took you long enough,” she says with a roll of the eyes.

“La…Laura?” he stutters. He only met her a few times as a kid but a faint familiarity was there, amplified when his brain flashes back to the dream-type memory of broken photo frames and a smiling face. The face that was now looking at him.

“In one,” she nods.

“I’m dead, right?” he asks tentatively, as he resettles himself back on the stump, feeling more at ease in her presence. “That’s why I’m here.”

“Hold your horses, kid…” Laura says with a roll of the eyes. “Right now there’s a bunch of people trying to keep you alive.”

“Bardo?” he asks

Laura looks around and shrugs.

“Maybe they should just let me go,” Stiles mutters, shame washing over him.

Laura’s eyes harden and suddenly she’s right there in front of him, an obvious Hale glare angrily there with her. A coldness seeps into him at the rush of the movement. He’s not sure if it’s because he’s currently in close proximity of someone who’s dead or if it’s because he’s obviously dying.

“You’re talking shit, Stilinski…” she snaps at him.

“Am I?” he snaps back. He rolls off the nemeton and paces back and forth in an angry stride. “People are dead because of me. I let him in.”

“Oh, okay then,” Laura says with a roll of the eyes. “If that’s how it is then I guess it’s my fault too. If I had been a bit clearer with my messages then maybe none of this would have happened.”

“But you were!” Stiles yells, feeling tears prickle his eyes. “I didn’t listen.”

“Yes you did,” she says quietly. He feels his hand being tugged until he’s sitting back on the stump, legs over the side. She releases it and settles her own fingers next to his. The coldness remains but Stiles doesn’t seem to mind, feeling a calmness between them. “They were warnings, yes. But there wasn’t much you could have done. The ball was already rolling.”

“Because of what me, Scott and Allison did?” he asks quietly. She nods at him and he shakes his head again. “So it is my fault then.”

“Are you seriously telling me you wouldn’t have done it if you had a second chance,” Laura asks softly. “You saved three people, Stiles. Your dad included.”

Stiles shrugs and then buries his palms into his eyes. “I don’t know,” he whispers. He feels ashamed that he honestly can’t answer the question. Would he? Would he save Melissa? Chris? His dad? Even if he knew what would happen after? How much people would suffer because of his own selfishness?

“I know you would have,” she tells him. “And no one judges you for that.”

“I still…” Stiles starts, he drops his hands and shakes his head. “A lot of people are still dead.”

“All the Nogitsune,” Laura buts in. “None of it was you.”

“And Kira,” Stiles continues. “I wrote the code for Barrow.”

“No you didn’t,” Laura states, leaning forward. She actually winces and looks apologetic. “That wasn’t a code for Barrow. It was a warning to you.”

Stiles blinks in surprise.

“What?”

“Barrow was already being controlled by the Nogitsune,” Laura insists. “He didn’t need a code to tell him to go after Kira. He already knew. That code was our way of telling you that Kira was in danger.”

“Maybe make it clearer next time?” Stiles asks dryly, with raised eyebrows, “And not send me somewhere where I get electrified into an evil fox spirit?”

“The dead can’t always communicate clearly,” she shrugs and then smirks. “And we don’t always make good decisions.”

Stiles snorts and then break into a watery grin.

It seems to please Laura who smiles back. “I haven’t seen you smile like that in a while.”

“You… you watch me?”

“We watch over all of you,” she says. She lifts her hand and places her palm against the side of his face until a coldness rests there, although he can’t quite feel skin against skin. “Don’t ever think you’re alone.”

Stiles nods, biting his lip.

“So what now?” he asks.

“Right now,” Laura says. “We have some unfinished business that needs to be addressed.”

“Like what?”

“Like closing a door.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

The Sheriff is inconsolable when he barrels though the door to see Stiles lifeless on the ground, Melissa and McCall trying to pump what little life they can into his abused and damaged body. The new deputy is with him – Parrish – who immediately tries to pull the older man away.

The CPR seems ineffective. Stiles continues to lay unresponsive and cold. Derek listens for any signs of life – a small beat to the heart, the sound of a lung inhaling and exhaling – but all he can hear is the loud thunderous beats from everyone else and McCall’s loud controlled breaths as he pushes them into Stiles mouth.

Derek glances away, not wanting to see the agent’s attempts, and catches sight of the burn marks that littered Stiles right arm. He knows there’s a similar one on the right side of his face too.

“Derek,” Melissa says with a frown between rounds of compressions. “We need him cognizant when he comes around.”

 _When_ , not _if_.

She nods down at his own hand where it’s still wrapped around Stiles un-injured hand. He’d been siphoning pain – _god, could he even feel anything when he was technically dead?_ He releases Stiles hand, surprised with himself. He hadn’t even realised he’d been doing it.

Melissa was obviously tiring. Arms trembling, face flushed, she kept rubbing the side of her face against her shoulder in an attempt to wipe away at the mixture of salty tears and building perspiration.

“Let me take over,” he says, gesturing to the curly haired nurse.

She stubbornly shakes her head.

“Let me help,” Derek repeats, gently placing his hand over her trembling ones and pushing them away.

“O- okay…” she stutters and Derek automatically continues the last few pumps to the chest to allow McCall the next round of breaths.

“Don’t give up,” the Sheriff says quietly and Derek isn’t sure who he’s talking to.

“You okay to continue?” he asks McCall who nods in response.

“It’s been too long,” he hears Lydia mutter tearfully.

“She’s right,” McCall grimly states.

“We’re not giving up,” Derek snaps, head snapping to look at the man.

“We need to restart his heart,” Melissa states.

“How about a defib?” McCall asks.

“There’s not enough time to get one,” Melissa shakes her head frustratingly. She glances around her and then settles on Kira.

“Kira?” she asks sharply.

Kira flinches at her name.

“Yes?” she asks, voice unsure.

“You just channelled a hella lot of electricity. You think you can put some of it to use?”

“You want to electrocute my son again?” the Sheriff asks, worried.

She turns to look at the man.

“Just enough to restart his heart.”

“You want me to shock him?” Kira asks. She frowns and worries her lips between her teeth, glancing at Scott. “I don’t… I don’t know how.”

It makes sense, but he’s startled by how clearly petrified and _unsure_ she is – she’s young and hasn’t even mastered controlling her aura – and yet here they were asking her to push just enough electricity into Stiles to get his heart beating again.

“Isaac,” he snaps over his shoulder to where he knows the boy is standing. “Go and find a defib. Just in case.”

Isaac nods and then darts away

“There’s a hand held one in exam room 3. Next floor down,” Melissa shouts after him before turning her attention back to the young kitsune. “I just want you to try.”

Kira looks uncertainly at Scott who nods back at her.

“Okay,” she stutters, coming over to where they were crouched. “I’ll try.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

They have to walk quite away through the white room until they find a door.

Stiles points out several times that there _isn’t_ a door, that there’s only white floors and walls and an annoying tree stump that never looks too far away, while Laura just rolls her eyes and channels a Derek-like scowl of annoyance at him. Strangely, it settles him.

“Oh,” Stiles exclaims out loud, surprised when a door suddenly appears. He swears that there was nothing there before. “That’s a door.”

“Obviously,” Laura says with another roll of her eyes. She claps a hand, hard against his shoulder. Or, at least, tries to. There’s coldness that pushes hard into his shoulder, causing him to stumble. “At it, Stilinski.”

“Hey,” he mutters, rubbing at where he thinks Laura struck him. “At least I know physical aggression _is_ a Hale thing.”

“Or maybe it’s just a Stilinski thing?”

“Definitely a Hale thing,” Stiles shakes his head and then turns away to look at the door. “FYI. I don’t think it’s as easy as that. It’s a supernatural door in my supernatural subconscious. I don’t think I can just go up to it and shut it.

“Yes you can,” Laura sighs, sounding tired and annoyed.

“No, you can’t…” a voice says from the door.

“Oh, look who’s here…” Stiles mutters sarcastically as the _other_ him appears in the doorway. “Now the party can really start.”

“You can’t get rid of me that easily,” the Nogitsune tutters. “Just like you can’t close this door.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Laura says, irritated. “It’s just a door. You can close it.”

Stiles eyes the door wearily, wondering if they were a safe distance away.

“Can he come through it,” he asks, worried.

“No,” Laura says, shaking her head.

“Nice touch with the mountain ashy by the way,” the Nogitsune version of him says. He pushes himself up against the barrier and grins, despite the obvious pain it must cause. “And the electricity. I didn’t see that coming.”

“Because we don’t think _exactly_ the same,” Stiles says, relieved at the thought.

“Touché,” Nogitsune nods at him. “But I’m still here.”

“Not for long,” Laura grits her teeth. “Don’t listen to him, Stiles. You can shut the door.”

“You can’t shut me out, Stiles…” he says. Stiles starts to feel sick as the Nogitsune grin widens. He pats at the invisible mountain ash barrier with his hand, pulling it back and breathing with satisfaction at the pain it causes. “I’ll always be here, just under the skin. They’ll be a darkness.”

“Deaton warned me about that,” Stiles says. He shrugs in disinterest, refusing to admit the nogitsune’s words bothered him.

“An itch just under the skin,” the Nogitsune continues, smiling cruelly. “That’ll be me.”

“I’ll deal with it,” Stiles mutters at him. “You’re not pulling the strings anymore.”

“You can’t stop me, Stiles. I’m a thousand years old…” he starts to repeats again. Stiles rolls his eyes. _Doesn’t this guy have any other lines_ , he thinks to himself. “This was my game. You can’t close the-…”

“Oh, shut the fuck up,” Stiles snaps seconds before he marches up to the door, slamming it shut right in the nogitsune’s startled face.

There’s a stunned silence after.

“That was…” Laura starts to say.

“Awesome?” Stiles asks with a sheepish grin, turning to look at her.

“Yeah,” she smirks and nods at him and then turns on her heel. “And completely not needed. You could have shut the door when I _first_ told you,” she says over her shoulder.

“Yeah,” Stiles says, having to trot to keep up with her. “Sorry about that,” he says a second before he suddenly doubles over, a hot white pain exploding in his chest. “Oh my fucking god,” he practically screams out.

“Stiles?” Laura’s at his side in an instant.

“Am I dying?” he asks, trying to push himself upright, feeling his chest muscles cramp. “For real this time.”

Laura’s cold ghostly hands hover over him, between touching and not touching, in her limbo-dic state. “No,” she says, smiling at him reassuringly. “You’re friends are saving you.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

It takes a while for Kira to channel enough electricity to emit a charge but as soon as little sparks appear Melissa directs the kitsune’s hand to Scott’s chest.

“There’s no harm in trying,” Melissa says out loud and she’s right. Stiles is categorically dead. There’s no pulse. He’s not breathing. And there’s no signs of Isaac and the emergency defibrillator either.

Kira’s hesitant at first, giving Stiles small bursts of charge that do nothing but cause his body to stiffen and then fall lax again. This process repeats itself a few times, only pausing for Melissa to check for signs of life and Derek and McCall to slip back in with their practiced routine.

 _“Isaac you better have found it,”_ Derek mutters quietly, not satisfied with their progress. Stiles has been down for too long. Too long to be healthy, he thinks.

“I can do it,” Kira says with sudden determination and orders everyone to clear again.

She doesn’t at first and Derek is about to flat out yell for Isaac to get his ass back there when Kira snaps loudly in his ear. “CLEAR.”

This time her eyes glow startlingly bright and her aura shines, the shape of the fox-spirit clearly framed around her. From the gasps around him he knows the others can see it too. Melissa immediately draws her hands away from Stiles body. Derek shoves at McCall’s when he sees the older man’s hesitancy.

Stiles body arches again, before falling back to the ground. There’s an unmistaken sound of a fluttered heart-beat and then silence again.

“Whatever you just did,” Derek orders, grabbing at Kira’s outstretched hand. “Do it again.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Holy shit,” Stiles complains, rubbing at his chest. “That fucking hurts.”

“It’s supposed to,” Laura grins. She joins him back on the nemeton where Laura had just dumped him. “Feeling pain is good. It means you’re still connected to the land of the living.”

“You can’t feel pain?” he asks.

“You could punch me in the face and I wouldn’t feel a thing,” she says with a satisfied shrug.

“You’re a werewolf,” he deadpans. And then frowns. “Can I even touch your face? What with you being dead and all.”

“Stop avoiding.”

“Avoiding what?” he asks before another wave of pain ripples across his chest. Whiteness explodes behind his eyeballs. When he blinks it away, Laura is still there, body shimmery and wavering before it settles back into shape again.

“That,” she says, pointing at him. “You need to go.”

Stiles straightens up, looking Laura hard in the eye.

“What if I don’t deserve to go back?” he asks, sounding unsure of himself.

Laura sighs loudly beside him.

“We’ve been through this.” She says quietly. “It’s not your fault.”

Stiles doesn’t respond. He glances away and drops his head down, staring at his feet.

“You don’t belong here, Stiles…” Laura shakes her head at him. “This isn’t the afterlife. I don’t even belong here.  Do you know how hard it was for me to get here? This place might be full of light but it’s only masking the darkness. And it definitely didn’t want me here.”

She rolls her eyes at the curious look Stiles gives her. “C’mon,” she says. “It was created by the Nemeton. It was never going to be good.”

“I guess,” Stiles says. He plays with a thread on his sleeve. _Not good._ Maybe it’s exactly where he needs to be. _Not good. Not good. Not good._

“You _don’t_ belong here,” She repeats, her tone firmer. “Scott needs you. _Derek_ needs you. And what about your dad?”

“Don’t,” he says weakly. He doesn’t want to talk about his dad. About how devastated he’d be if Stiles stayed dead. Of course, he knew. He’d barely survived his wife dying and had only managed to drag himself out of his grief, and the bottom of a bottle, because his son had needed him. He wouldn’t have that this time. He wouldn’t have that protective factor to stop the spiralling depression and pit of despair. Stiles shakes his head to try and stop the destructive thoughts burning his already sore chest further.

“You’re going to do great things, Stiles…” Laura continues, seemingly unaware or ignoring the fact that Stiles is lost in his thoughts. “You _need_ to survive.”

“I don’t _need_ to do anything,” Stiles mutters bitterly. “I think Stiles has done enough.”

“You have,” Laura agrees, nodding. “And so have I. I can’t stay here much longer.”

“Then take me with you,” he asks, lifting his head and looking at her. He feels his eyes pool with tears. “Don’t leave me here.”

“It doesn’t work like that, kid…” she states sadly and then shakes her head. “Besides, if I brought you back there’s going to be a lot of people ready to tear my ass asunder.”

“Like my mom?” Stiles asks, voice cracking. He releases the thread between his thumb and finger and ends up twisting the bottom of his sleeve instead.

“Yeah,” Laura smiles sadly, lifting a hand to rest it beside his face. It’s wavering again, falling in and out of focus. “She’d be really disappointed if you gave up.”

Laura sits back and Stiles nods, wiping at his eyes with the back of his sleeve.

“Is Allison there too?” he asks.

“I haven’t met her,” Laura shakes her head. “But I know she’s there. And I know she wants you to survive.”

Laura leans over again, resting her mouth against his ear. There’s a rush of muffled voices, Stiles can’t really decipher what anyone is saying, but he thinks they sound familiar just the same. Laura’s voice slips in between them. “It’s time to go home,” she breathes quietly into his ear.

“Wait!” Stiles gasps.

Laura pauses and pulls back questionably.

“Do you have a message for Derek?” suddenly remembering he’s talking to Derek’s sister. Derek’s _dead_ sister. Who has trouble communicating, apparently. “I can do that. Pass a message on, I mean.”

“It’s okay,” Laura shakes her head and smiles at him. “Derek already knows.”

She suddenly manages to shove him back down on the nemeton, with more force than necessary… well he suddenly finds himself lying like a star-fish across the tree stump and not really knowing how he got there. Laura looms above him and rolls her eyes. “What are you waiting for? Wake up already.”

She grins once more before flicking him right between the eyes just as world explodes in another wave of pain and light, ripping him violently from the white room and sending him crashing back to reality.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“AGAIN!” Melissa barks at them.

“CLEAR!” Kira shouts out before charging another bolt out of her palm and into Stiles chest.

Stiles arches off the floor again and then slumps back. This time the flutter of the heart that follows stays and beats loudly in Derek’s ears.

“He’s back!” Derek snaps in relief even before Melissa has a chance to check his pulse at the side of his neck. McCall tracks Melissa’s movements for confirmation. When she nods in agreement the man drops his head in relief, muttering under his breath.

“Thank you,” he hears a voice crack brokenly. Glancing over his shoulder he sees that the Sheriff has slumped down the wall, face wet with tears. Parrish is crouched next to him, hand resting on his arm. “Oh god. Thank you. Thank you.”

Stiles suddenly sucks in a breath, arching off the floor again, this time by his own volition, as he coughs and hacks.

“Hey, hey…” Derek leans down, trying to reassure the sudden shaking figure. He helps Melissa roll him over into the recovery position, knowing it would be more comfortable and also safer for the still not quite with it boy. Stiles doesn’t resist, lolling over easily, flopping on his side and rolling against Derek’s leg. “It’s okay. You’re okay. Just breathe, Stiles…” Derek instructs.

Stiles continues to cough and hack, sucking in lungful’s of air.

“Shh, you’re okay,” Derek soothes, planting his warm hand against the back of Stiles wet shirt, feeling the cold skin through the thin shirt, rubbing gently. “Just breathe.”

“Der…Derek?” Stiles chokes on the word, bringing bile and saliva with it. A cold hand suddenly comes up, struggling to find purchase, before it twists weakly into his own shirt.

“I’m right here,” Derek reassures him, patting his back. “I’m not leaving. Not again.”

Stiles nods and pushes his forehead against Derek’s knee, breathing shakily against it.

“Dad?” Stiles asks, calling out.

“I’m here son,” the Sheriff says, coming over straight away. McCall moves out of the way, standing up, allowing the man space to reach his son.

Stiles immediately tries to push himself up, in search of his dad’s voice. He glances up blearily and Derek can tell he’s disorientated and dizzy. There’s tears in his eyes.

“Hey now,” the Sheriff admonishes. His hand falls to Stiles face, and pushes the wet hair away from where’s it’s plastered to his forehead, before resting his palm there. “Stop that.”

“Dad,” Stiles croaks out, tears falling and mixing with his already wet face. He sags after a few seconds of pathetically trying to claw his way up and drops his face back against Derek’s leg. Derek can still feel the tremors against him and the distinctive scent of his tears, mingling with his anxiety and other tumultaneous emotions.

“Just stay down,” the Sheriff says, running his hand backwards, through his son’s hair. “Get your breath back.” Even as he says it, Derek can see the older man take a shuddering breath of his own. “That was one hell of a time-out, kid.”

Derek chuckles because it’s probably the understatement of the year.

McCall mutters something and Derek turns his head, curious.

“Hmm,” the Agent says, pointing to the other side of the roof. “Where’s the _other_ him gone?”

Derek had concentrated so much on Stiles he hadn’t even realised the mountain ash now was missing the entrapped embodiment.

“He just disappeared,” Parrish speaks up. “One minute he was there and the next he was wasn’t.”

“Poof,” Stiles manages to cough out and then laugh, which only adds to another coughing fit. “Gone.”

“Stiles?” Scott asks, stepping forward. “What did you do?”

“Closed the door,” Stiles finally says, sounding sleepy and exhausted. “Laura helped.”

“What?” Derek exclaims, startling everyone, apart from Stiles who promptly passes out.

He only has a second to process what Stiles has said, silently reprimanding him for dropping that bombshell on him, when he realises that the nogitsune wasn’t the only thing that had gone. The electrical burns, right there in front of his eyes, were slowly receding until they disappeared completely.

Afterwards the only two things that were left to indicate something had happened was the zing of electricity and the slight arrhythmia to Stiles heart-beat.

 

* * *

 

_tbc_


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the delay, but work and RL take up so MUCH time.
> 
> Mnimal trigger warnings here. It's basically a whole chapter of shocky!stiles and tlc. 
> 
> There's probably going to be one more chapter after this one.

 

_Chapter 9_

 

* * *

 

 

 

Stiles is left a disorientated, confused, shivering and wet mess.

In the chaos happening in the halls below, Melissa is able to discreetly bundle him into an exam room and perform a quick ECG. Derek isn’t entirely sure how accurate it will be with the fine tremors that ran up and down the boy’s body.

Melissa hums, trying to soothe Stiles distress, even more palpable in his confused state, and clucks over the strip of results that she pulls from the machine.

“There’s a little arrhythmia,” she says, helping Stiles to put his shirt back in place. Derek wasn’t really surprised. The slight off beat rhythm had been there since Stiles had come to on the roof but he wasn’t sure what else he should be looking for. “Which is to expected, considering what’s just happened,” she adds reassuringly at the Sheriff. Stiles makes a weak attempt at trying to sit back up, but his arms waver beside him, hands clenching the sides of the exam table in a death grip. The Sheriff immediately steps back in beside his son, offering him a secure arm around his shoulders and back. Stiles, as though his strings had just been cut, promptly sags into his dad’s side. “I can’t see anything that would indicate immediate health risks.”

Derek sighs in relief. Stiles had been through enough without having too much complications to deal with.

“We’ll set up another test once everything’s died down, okay sweetie?” Melissa says to Stiles, wrapping a blanket around his still damp form.

Stiles blinks sluggishly from where he’s still pressed against his dad’s side and nods, although his eyes roam the room, his focus glazed and hardly there.

The cacophony of outside filters into the room as the others bundle in, McCall the loudest of them all.

“Will someone please tell me what the hell is going on?” he barks loudly, Scott hot on his heels, eyes blazing angrily.

Stiles shrinks back, hand clutching at his father’s shirt.

“I promise I’ll tell you later,” Melissa says, hotly, shaking her head. “Now is not the time.”

With the chaos still happening within the hospital – bodies strewn, the injured still to be tended to, the police needed to help maintain the situation – it’s clear that Melissa, the Sheriff, Parrish and McCall are needed here.

“Derek,” Melissa orders. “Take the kids back to mine,” she says, stepping back over to Stiles, placing a cooling hand against his forehead. “Get some fluids into him. Something to eat if you can. Myself, the Sheriff and Raf will come when we can. I’ll try and get some supplies for Stiles before we leave.”

“Dad?” Stiles croaks, bewildered. Despite the constant, spiking confusion, he’s still manages to wade through it, looking up at him with clearly hurt-filled eyes.

“Just for a little while, bud…” the sheriff says, raking a hand through his son’s hair. “I’ll meet you there.”

Just as quickly as the cognizant episode appears, it filters away, and Derek finds his SUV crammed full of teens with varying emotions. The scent, to his senses, is overwhelming, dark and bitter, heavy against his tongue. Grief settles over all them. Anxiety lingers underneath it – Derek would have missed it against the others varying emotions, if it had not been for the fact that Derek was already familiar with Stiles own chemo-signals.

Stiles is in the back, Lydia pressed against him. His face lays against the cool glass, puffs of breath fogging it up intermittently, eyes blinking open and closed, breaths hitching every now and then. Lydia laces their fingers together and Derek can see from the rear view mirror that Stiles doesn’t react to it, merely remaining lax in her hold, letting her manipulate his fingers until it’s clasped in hers.

Scott and Kira have also managed to squeeze in the back, although it’s difficult, with Scott in the middle so, Derek suspects, that he can reach Stiles. Derek sees that he has his arm across Lydia’s shoulder, hand resting at the back of Stiles neck.

Isaac, the tallest of everyone, sits in the front quietly, stewing in his own grief.

“Allison saved us,” he mutters. “She knew how to save us.”

Derek eyes snap to the back again but Stiles remains lax against the window, not even reacting to their fallen friend, despite the others visible flinches.

Kira and Scott fall into a hushed conversation, Derek can tell so as not to disturb Stiles, but Derek cam still hear it, Isaac too.

“You don’t have to,” Scott says quietly.

“I can’t…” Kira says, shaking her head. “I just feel like it’s…”

“It’s not your fault,” Scott interrupts her.

“Apart from my foxfire accidently kick-starting it all,” she sighs bitterly.

“It’s _not_ your fault,” Scott repeats.

“Can you drop me off at home,” Kira says more loudly, leaning forward towards Derek. “I need to speak to my mom.”

Derek nods watching as Kira leans across the seats, planting her hand over Lydia’s and Stiles clasped ones.

“I’m sorry, Stiles…” she whispers.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

They deposit a still hardly there Stiles on the couch.

Isaac slumps in the armchair, ignoring Derek, Lydia and Scott as they move around Stiles.

Scott disappears upstairs in search of a change of clothes as Lydia re-wraps the blanket around his shoulders.

“Hey,” Derek says, crouching in front of Stiles from where he’s sat at one end of the couch.

Stiles glazed eyes look around him dazedly.

“Hey,” Derek repeats, hooking a finger under the pale boy’s chin and forcing his gaze to lock on him. “We need to get you into some warm and dry clothes,” Derek says. Stiles blinks at him but still doesn’t respond. “Then you can lie down and sleep.”

Scott re-appears with a set of soft track-suit bottoms and a light green shirt and a hoodie. Stiles is malleable enough for Derek and Lydia to strip him from his clothes and into the clean set, blinking sluggishly and wavering between them, until Derek tries to get him to lie down.

“Don’ wanna sleep,” Stiles protests, weakly fighting the hands that are pushing him down. “Can’t.”

“Just try,” Derek says. Stiles shakes his head, then stops as though the motion hurt, slumping sideways anyway. Derek makes quick work at getting him into a more comfortable position, pushing a cushion under his head, and lifting the teen’s legs on to the remainder of the couch.

Stiles turns and locks eyes with Derek, blinking determinedly. Derek sighs, recognising it for what it was, even in the midst of a shocky Stiles, the familiar stubbornness he was usually accustomed to.

Derek leans against the side of the armchair that Isaac is now curled up in and stares back as Stiles continues to blink at him, refusing to look anywhere else. They stay like that until the gaps between the blinks increase, minutes passing, and his breaths slowly even out.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Stiles comes to sometime later. He has a faint memory of Derek ordering him to sleep.

In fact he hardly even remembers anything clearly since the white room, just befuddled flashes of lying on a wet floor, Melissa examining him, latching on to his father and Scott’s dad yelling angrily.

Rubbing his aching head he realizes he must have fallen asleep, or at least passed out, considering now he’s lying on Melissa’s couch with a comforter thrown over him. The other occupants of the room are all still asleep, Isaac and his longs legs curled awkwardly into Melissa’s favorite armchair, Scott and Lydia slumped against the side of the couch he’s on, Lydia’s head resting on Scott’s shoulder.

“Hey,” he hears. Looking up he finds Derek in the kitchen doorway. “Heard you awake.”

“Miss me?” Stiles croaks, voice feeling dry and unused.

“Surprisingly yes,” Derek says.

Stiles blinks in surprise before giving Derek a weak smile.

“C’mon…” Derek says, helping Stiles to sit up and manoeuvre off the couch so as not disturb Scott and Lydia.

“Can’t believe two werewolves are sleeping through my awakening,” Stiles says, dragging the comforter with him and wrapping it around his body. “Thought they’d be awake by now.”

“They’re exhausted,” Derek says, planting a hand against Stiles neck and squeezing gently. “You all are.”

Derek sits him at the kitchen table and makes him a drink a tumbler of water. Stiles sips it slowly, feeling its contents swirl in his stomach.

“Have that for now,” Derek tells him. “There’s some Gatorade you can have later. Ready for something to eat?”

Stiles eyes widen, nausea rising and he shakes his head, blanching when he spots the remains of several sandwiches.

“I can’t,” he protests. “I’ll be sick.”

“You need to eat something.”

“I _can’t_ ,” Stiles says again, eyeing the empty plates, half eaten sandwiches and the obvious crust left behind from one sandwich that Stiles knows was Scott’s. “Not that. It’s too much.”

It’s a _sandwich_ , Stiles tells himself – cheese and tomato by the looks of it – it shouldn’t be too much but the mere thought of the bread and cheese and acidity of the tomato makes him want to projectile vomit right there and then.

“I know,” Derek says, pushing a bowl in front of him. “That’s why I made you soup instead.”

Stiles eyes the bowl wearily. It looks innocent enough but even the watery chicken broth unsettles and churns his stomach.

“You need to rehydrate and eat, Stiles…” Derek shakes his head at him, before waving his mobile at him. “Besides, Melissa text me to remind you that she’s not against using a feeding tube,” Derek frowns at the idea. “And I think she was being serious.”

Stiles winces at the thought because he knew Melissa _would_ do it, if it meant keeping vital fluids down.

“Okay,” he sighs dejectedly. “I’ll try.”

He doesn’t even manage half a bowl before his stomach spasms and he ends up dry heaving over the sink. And Derek’s _right_ there, beside him, rubbing his back with his palm.

“It’s okay,” he says quietly when Stiles heaves turn into wet sobs. “It’s over now.”

“It’s not,” Stiles whispers. “It’s not okay.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Stiles awakes abruptly, his whole body violently flinching itself to consciousness.

He can’t remember falling asleep or even returning to the couch.

His arm is outstretched and clasped in someone’s hand and something sharp is being pressed against his skin. For a second Stiles thinks it’s him – _void_ – who’s staring back, touching him and making him bleed.

Stiles shrieks in terror, wrenching his arm free and dragging it away, feeling something hard and sharp scratch at the back of his hand. He cries out again, flinching into the back of the couch and hitting out violently when the hands come back and try to touch him again.

“Hey, hey…” a familiar voice says, pulling the other figure away and replacing it with its own. “It’s okay. You’re okay, Stiles. You’re safe.”

It takes him a second to realise it’s Derek who’s in front of him, touching his arms, keeping him in place, and the figure standing above him is Deaton, not Void, concern etched into his usually impassive face.

“Whaa…” Stiles slurs, words heavy against his tongue, heart beating wildly against his chest.

“Sorry… Sorry…” Derek murmurs, catching Stiles face and errant gaze between his hands. “We should have woken you up first.”

“What’s goin’ on?” Stiles asks, pulling away from Derek’s hands and cradling his arm against his chest.

“It’s my fault,” Scott says apologetically, appearing beside Deaton – Lydia and Isaac in tow. “You were deep asleep. I tried to wake you up, but well… I thought with how dead to the world you were…” Scott says and then winces at his choice of words, shrugging helplessly. “That we could do it without waking you up.”

“Do what?” Stiles asks, disturbed he’d been so deeply out of it that anything could have happened.

“It’s just an I.V.” Deaton says.

“No,” Stiles eyes widen, turning both accusatory and panicked as he looks at Derek. “I ate, Derek. I don’t need that.”

“It’s not…” Derek starts to shake his head.

“I promise I’ll eat more,” Stiles pleads at him. “I promise.”

“That was a feeding tube that we were talking about,” Derek says, slowly taking Stiles hand and laying Stiles arm out again. “This is just an I.V.”

“Where’s Melissa?” Stiles mumbles quietly, eyeing Deaton suspiciously.

“They’ll be a little while yet. Melissa called and asked Deaton to come and start the I.V…” Derek continues, nodding at Deaton to come closer. “It’ll help to make you feel less crappy.”

“Or look less like your dying,” he hears Isaac butt in.

“Isaac!” Lydia angrily glares, thumping him on the arm.

“Well, look at him,” Isaac waves at them. “He doesn’t _look_ any better. Does he?”

Stiles can only imagine what he looks like. The last time he’d spotted himself in the mirror he’d been accosted with a worrying pale and grey pallor and dark circles around his eyes.

“No offence, Doc…”  Stiles mutters, eyeing Deaton again. “But you’re not going to sedate me or, _you know_ , shoot me up with wolf lichen again?”

“That was unavoidable,” Deaton says instead, shaking his head.

Stiles harrumphs at that, but could only agree, it had probably saved Scott’s life at the time and no one could deny that it had given them all some time to regroup.

Instead of waiting for an actual answer from the frustratingly enigmatic man, Stiles turns an expectant look towards Derek, worrying his lip with anxiety.

“Just fluids,” Derek tells him, rubbing his thumb over the back of his hand and wiping the small smear of blood that was still there. “And antibiotics. You’re running a low grade fever.”

Stiles grumbles in disgruntlement but can’t help but feel soothed by Derek’s ministrations.

“Some painkillers too,” Deaton offers, sliding down on his knees by Derek’s side. Stiles hardens his eyes at the man. “Nothing too strong,” he hastily adds.

He lets Derek offer his arm to the older man, succumbing to a calmness he didn’t know Derek possessed.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

True to Deaton’s words, the painkillers were not too heavy, and he dozed naturally and lightly from post-nogitsune trauma, as opposed to a drug induced slumber.

He was surprised at how easily he let himself sleep, and even more surprised that it wasn’t marred by dark images, thoughts and memories, but thankfully he slept nightmare free.

Somewhere between nap four and nap five, Chris had arrived and had taken residence in the armchair, Isaac now sitting at his feet.

Stiles watches the two sitting quietly together, Chris nursing a coffee in one hand, looking as though he was in need of something stronger. He idly rested a hand on top of Isaac’s head, running his fingers through the younger man’s soft curls as he sniffled his misery beside him.

Stiles knows he should slither off the couch, drag himself to Chris’ feet and beg for forgiveness.

His daughter was dead.

Because of _him._

 _It’s not,_ Stiles had said, _It’s not okay._

It will _never_ be okay, he thinks bitterly.

It wasn’t something that was easily forgivable but here the man was sitting in the same room as him while Stiles slept _soundly_ and looking at him with only pity in his eyes instead of the hatred he knew he was entitled to.

“Go back to sleep,” Chris says instead of the fire and brimstone and a hail of bullets he deserved.

“When did you get here?” Stiles asks. His voice was loosening up now, feeling less strangled in his throat. But just the sight of Chris threatened to tighten it all over again.

“About half an hour ago,” he says, turning away and staring into the coffee. “Parrish dropped me off. Melissa seemed to think I shouldn’t be alone.”

“Allison would want you here,” Lydia says appearing from the kitchen, eyes red-rimmed and puffy. “She’d want us all here together.”

She curls down by the side of the couch and takes Stiles hand in hers, careful not to disturb the cannula and wires disappearing into his hand. Scott follows her out of the kitchen a beat later, gently lifting Stiles feet and tucking himself under them before resettling him into place. Derek leans against the kitchen doorway and watches.

“She would,” Chris agrees, and then, almost as an afterthought, he added. “She knew the risks. She knew what could happen.”

“She was a warrior,” Derek says.

“I miss her,” Isaac admits.

“I love her,” Lydia whispers softly.

“She loved us all,” Scott tells them.

Stiles feels tears prickle his eyes as shame engulfs him. He shakily uses his free hand to wipe the wetness away, but when it came to it he couldn’t bring himself to take his hand away and see the sorrow and grief on his friend’s, and Allison’s father’s, faces.

“I’m sorry,” is all he has left to give.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

When the others finally turn up, Stiles is free of the I.V, for now at least.

Melissa has changed into fresh scrubs. Stiles knows this because he can vaguely remember seeing splashes of red across her old ones. His dad is sans jacket and McCall has lost his lanyard and FBI badge, suit crumpled and dirty, smears of blood across his white shirt.

“He had the IV?” Melissa asks Derek before she even greets anyone.

Derek nods.

“You’ve been drinking? Had something to eat?” she asks, turning her attention to Stiles. She presses her hand across his forehead and he can’t help but lean into it. Guilt flares because she shouldn’t be prioritising him over everyone else. He doesn’t deserve this type of attention.

Stiles nods into her hand, eyes tearing up again.

Melissa has more bags of fluids in her hand and she spots him eyeing them.

“Later, sweetie…” she reassures him, giving his shoulder a squeeze. “We’ll do it later, okay.”

“Hey, kiddo…” his dad says, dropping heavily onto the couch beside him. “You doing okay?”

“Hmm,” Stiles affirms, letting his dad pull him into his side.

“I know now is still not the best time,” McCall says, shrugging his suit jacket off and laying it over the back of the couch. “But I need some answers.”

Scott scowls, marching up to him.

“You’re damn right it’s not the best time,” he snaps. “Allison is _dead_. Stiles _nearly_ died tonight. We’re grieving!”

“Kitchen. Now!” Melissa orders angrily.

Stiles hears them bickering quietly from the kitchen. Rubbing his head tiredly, pressure building behind his eyes with the voices, he sighs wearily into his dad’s side.

“You want to go upstairs?” his dad whispers down at him, tucking his head against him, hand covering his ear. “Take a break from everyone?”

“Yeah…” Stiles shakily nods, feeling inexplicably emotional again.

His dad helps him upstairs to Scott’s room, at Stiles preference, and assists him on to the bed. It’s a bit of a tight squeeze but his dad manages to perch on the side of the bed, arm wrapped around Stiles, body pressed against the length of him.

“I know it doesn’t feel like it, kid…” he dad says against him, fingers brushing though his hair, nails scratching gently against his scalp. “But it will get better. Things don’t always stay bad.”

 

XXX

 

_tbc_

**Author's Note:**

> Playlist for River of Lead (maybe added to in the future)
> 
> 1\. River of Lead - Aaron Sprinkle  
> 2\. Lose It - Austra  
> 3\. and then you - Greg Laswell  
> 4\. Sleepwalking - Lissie  
> 5\. Wake Me Up - Avicii  
> 6\. Liar Liar - Avicii  
> 7\. Dream Warriors - Dokken


End file.
